Internship and Coaching of Fresh Female Engineers in Development Programmes of Nepal: Promoting Gender Inclusion for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is providing Technical Assistance (TA) to the Government of Nepal through the Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI) under the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, later restructured into the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration that is responsible for local development in Nepal, in the implementation of Rural Roads, Trail (foot) Bridge, and Motorable Bridge programmes. The DoLI has now been readjusted within the Federal Ministry of Urban Development recently, which is responsible for providing technical support and grants to implement infrastructure programmes for local and provincial governments. While the SDC tries to promote workforce diversity in the programmes, it struggled to bring female engineers into its infrastructure sector technical programmes in early 2009. Only a handful of female engineers were involved in the programmes. Therefore, the internship programme targeted at female engineers was started to train young fresh female civil engineering graduates to work in the rural roads programme initially in 2009. With its success, it continued in the trail and motorable bridge programmes from 2011 onwards to date. So far, over a hundred female civil engineering graduates have been trained in Nepal and are working in different organizations within the country and abroad, the government systems, and the private sector. They contribute their skills and knowledge in project design, implementation, management, and supervision.