As part of its Gender and Social Inclusion Advocacy drive, UNDP Nepal initiated a poetry competition series back in 2021. The objective was — and remains — to encourage young people to use one of the oldest forms of the oral arts and experience the free flow of language and powerful expression to convey perceptions, opinions, feelings, and encounters on gender equality and social inclusion.

During the first three editions, we engaged more than 200 students, their teachers, and guardians from 100 schools in all seven provinces under various themes such as ‘Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world’, ‘End violence against women now’! In 2022, we expanded our outreach and four UNDP country offices in the region came together to mobilise poets from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Nepal to reflect on the planet and recite poems on the need to preserve it.

The poems beautifully convey the fears, tears, and cheers of life-changing past experiences and the future hopes and dreams for a just society where women can live in dignity.   

Here are the poems of Provincial Level Poetry Competition Winners of 2023.