Stephanie knows Nepal like the back of her hand. After more than
a decade working in the country, she can navigate a bustling Kath-
mandu marketplace with aplomb, or unpack a social issue with
astute analysis. But the first time she visited Nepal at the age of 19,
she was completely out of her comfort zone.
She was travelling with Oz Quest, a program that facilitates short-
term volunteer projects in developing countries. At first she was a
volunteer herself, then she returned to Nepal as a group leader. It
was after one of these missions that Stephanie found herself alone
in Kathmandu. One day, she noticed a woman in a colourful sari
wander down a backstreet and into a tin shed. Something called on
Stephanie to follow her. “Curiosity has taken me to a lot of strange
places,” she laughs.
Inside the shed, a group of seven women with disabilities were busy
making wax candles. Speaking with one of them in broken English,
Stephanie learnt of their predicament. “She told me they’d all come
from different remote villages where they had been hidden in the
back rooms of houses because their families didn’t want anyone
in the community to know they had a child with a disability,” she
remembers. “No landlord would let them rent in their building
because they believed they would bring bad luck.”
Ostracised, isolated and impoverished as the women were, Stepha-
nie was struck by their determination. “To me, they had great ability.
There were 10-hour electricity cuts in Nepal at that time, so it was
very enterprising of them to be making candles to sell in the mar-
ket. I saw a lot of potential.” What happened next has become the
stuff of legend, the plot twist in the documentary film Bring the Light
and the focus of Stephanie’s book, From a Tin Shed to the United
Nations. She took $200 – all that was left of her travel money – and
used it to pay for two trainers to upskill the women. She didn’t know
it at the time, but it was her first social enterprise taking shape.
Seven Women has since trained and employed more than 1000
Nepali women in handicraft production, and positively impacted
another 5000-plus through outreach programs.
Seven Women was born out of a chance encounter; but in a way, it
was destiny for Stephanie. “I always had a passion for social justice,
a desire to make a difference,” she reflects. “Mum encouraged that
when I was growing up. But I think what really had an impact was
when my parents took my brother, sister and me out of high school
for six weeks. We did a caravanning trip up the centre of Australia
and down the east coast, staying in Aboriginal communities. That
trip sparked questions in my mind about how Indigenous people are
treated and the social issues they face.”
Earning degrees in International Development from Latrobe Univer-
sity and Peace and Conflict Resolution from Uppsala University in
Sweden, Stephanie dreamt of working with Aboriginal communities.
She spent time in Daly River with the Red Cross, and later in north-
east Arnhem Land. It wasn’t until a fortuitous encounter with a friend
of a friend that Stephanie considered taking her skills overseas.
On her first trip to Nepal, she was overwhelmed by the kindness
of the people she met. “Once when I was leaving a homestay, the
owner wanted to give me one of her saris, even though she only had
six in her wardrobe,” Stephanie recalls. “That generosity and the
culture of sharing and community really moved me. But it was the
injustice that kicked me into action.”
After sponsoring their training, Stephanie helped the seven women
export their new knitted and felted handicrafts to Australia. Every
Wednesday, she set up a stall on campus at Latrobe, sending the
profits back to Nepal. Remembering the difficulties they faced trying
to rent in Kathmandu, Stephanie’s initial goal was to raise enough
money so the women could build their own home.
“I never started Seven Women thinking it would be a life long
endeavour,” she says. “I just wanted to see the women have a proper
place to live.” Now splitting her time between Nepal and Austra-
lia, Stephanie couldn’t hide from the scale of the problem she’d
scratched the surface of. “As we progressed, more and more women
started knocking at our door asking for opportunity to be trained:
single mothers, widows, domestic violence victims. I was shocked
by the magnitude of the situation.”
The handicrafts training program grew to welcome women from
other walks of life and within five years, Stephanie was wholesal-
ing handicrafts to 200 shops around Australia. Today, Seven Women
has six centres in Kathmandu and rural Nepal – community hubs
where women can access training, education and information about
a wide range of topics, including sustainable farming and financial
literacy. There’s also a shelter for women experiencing domestic vio-
lence. Stephanie is less hands-on now; instead, she employs 22 local
managers to oversee three different projects: the original manufac-
turing business, plus a visitors’ centre and a guesthouse.
In creating income opportunities for hundreds of marginalised
women, Seven Women is chipping away at a systemic problem.
“There’s definitely been a shift in how people with disabilities are
seen,” Stephanie says of the progress that’s been made. “In the caste
system, people with disabilities are on the lower rung. Once they
start earning money, it’s like they’ve jumped to the highest caste.
People start to listen to them. Literacy classes give them a platform
to share their stories, which allows them to unite and have confi-
dence.” After the devastating earthquake in 2015, a women’s group
formed out of one of those classes. “They were able to decide how”
“
That generosity
and the culture
of sharing and
community really
moved me