From the Princeton Weekly bulletin, March 3, 1997
Labouisse fellow to spend year at SEWA in India
The 1997-98 Labouisse Fellow is Sangita Shresthova '97, a Germanic languages and literatures major who is also earning a certificate in the Program in Theater and Dance.
She will spend a year in India studying the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), a nongovernmental organization offering loans to women through locally based cooperative banks. Founded about 25 years ago, SEWA is based in Ahmedabad but has branches in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and elsewhere. Shresthova plans to focus on the effect SEWA has "on traditional ideals of Hindu womahood among its participants," she says.
A Czech citizen born of Czech and Nepali parents in Prague, Shresthova grew up in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she hopes eventually to establish an organization modeled on SEWA. "One of the main challenges," she says, "will be the transition between the urban setting of SEWA and the predominantly rural and mountainous environment in Nepal."
At Princeton her thesis examines the German approach to gender and development in Nepal as manifested in the Gorkha Development Project, a "German-sponsored grass-roots development initiative."
Shresthova has worked since freshman year as cashier manager in the Student Center and as a student assistant in the Firestone Library Reserve Room. Coauthor of Pruvodce Nepalem , a Czech language guide to Nepal, she also studies and performs traditional Nepali dance.
The fellowship honors Henry Richardson Labouisse '26, who held posts in the State Department and the United Nations for nearly 40 years, serving as head of UNICEF from 1965 to 1979. It supports a graduating senior or first-year alumnus in study abroad. The fellow must have "a record of academic achievement reflecting serious interest in problems of development and modernization and must intend a career devoted to such problems."