She may feature regularly on the cover of Swedish women’s magazine M-Magasin, but 68-year-old Amelia Amado refers to the Tharu women of Eastern Nepal as the most beautiful women she has seen in her life.
She credited that to the women’s resilience in the face of poverty, long hours in the fields and taking life as it comes.
“Up in the mountains, you really feel that women have a tough life, they have to carry heavy loads up and down mountains, they have to get up and work in the fields shortly after giving birth,” she said. “But yet they are not depressed, they are always smiling.”
Amado is publisher and editor of M-Magasin, which contributes a fifth of its newsstands sales to UNICEF’s work in Nepal. She visits Nepal regularly to see how the US$150,000 that the magazine donates to UNICEF every year is being put to use.
Last month she was in Udaypur, speaking to women struggling to cope with uterine prolapse, domestic violence, and the outmigration of men from the villages. The readership of M are Swedish women above 60 years, and Amado says that demographic means it has different interests than magazines meant for young women. For example, the magazine worked on a pink ribbon campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer in Sweden, and has also donated to projects in Ethiopia.
Thus, when Ingeborg Ekblom of UNICEF Sweden approached Amado about contributing to UNICEF Nepal, the editor didn’t need much convincing. However, when she decided to donate part of her magazine’s profits to improve lives of children and women in Nepal, she never thought that it would be a life-changing experience for her as well.