Kathmandu – Elisa Chhetri (Virat Khati) is a transgender woman and an active member of the FSTP (Future Sexual and Gender Minority Political Leaders) program under Maya Ko Pahichan Nepal. Today, she has emerged as a strong voice for her community. Her journey is not only a story of personal struggle, but also an inspiring example of self-confidence, courage, and growing political awareness. From childhood, Elisa faced discrimination, humiliation, and rejection from society, family, and various social structures because of her gender identity. She encountered different forms of mistreatment in schools as well as in public spaces. Many times, she had to struggle just to prove her existence. Negative societal attitudes, economic hardships, and lack of opportunities created deep challenges in her life.<\/p>\n
However, these struggles did not weaken her. Instead, they motivated her to step forward and inspire other members of the transgender and LGBTIQ+ community to engage in politics. Elisa strongly believes, \u201cWithout participation in politics, the rights and identity of our community cannot be institutionalized.\u201d With this vision, she began her journey toward political leadership.<\/p>\n
Her leadership skills, confidence, and political understanding are being improved significantly after participating in the Breaking Barriers Project. This project is not only providing her with training, but it is also creating a safe platform for her to express her voice fearlessly. Through this opportunity of political literacy training, she gained knowledge about political issues, the policy-making process, leadership development, and coordination with public representatives, which made her more capable and confident. In particular, the political literacy training gave her a deeper understanding of Nepal\u2019s political structure, constitution, policymaking processes, and civil rights. After this training, she developed the confidence to raise community issues, speak in public, and interact with political leaders.<\/p>\n
Elisa\u2019s primary motivation for entering politics is to end the discrimination, exclusion, and injustice faced by her community. She envisions a future where people from the LGBTIQ+ community can participate in politics with dignity, reach leadership positions, and ensure representation at the policy-making level. According to her, Upcoming activities of the project where Elisa will engage for advocating and raising awareness on LGBTIQ+ community in different platforms and also gain knowledge through engaging and networking with political parties for mentorship on politics, will be a huge opportunity for her in terms of exposure and capacity enhancement to come in political representation and leadership. Today, Elisa Chhetri is not just a political activist but also a symbol of hope, courage, and change for many people in the community. Her story proves that with the right opportunities, capacity development, and guidance, anyone can become a leader and drive meaningful social change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu – Elisa Chhetri (Virat Khati) is a transgender woman and an active member of the FSTP (Future Sexual and Gender Minority Political Leaders) program under Maya Ko Pahichan Nepal. Today, she has emerged as a strong voice for her community. Her journey is not only a story of personal struggle, but also an inspiring example of self-confidence, courage, and growing political awareness. From childhood, Elisa faced discrimination, humiliation, and rejection from society, family, and various social structures because of her gender identity. She encountered different forms of mistreatment in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8,621,490,3,2065],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-human-rights","category-news","category-slider","category-society","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14383,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14381\/revisions\/14383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}