A senior midwife of great experience, Sita Kumari Sharma speaks very seriously about the public service. She has many stories too, about her experiences at Nepal’s Birendranagar Municipal Health Office. But if you ask her about the public service, her sense of duty is what she talks about.

“If sharing my knowledge helps people, brings positive change or adds a new dimension to their life, even if no one else does, I feel internally motivated to do so. I think I will be engaged in social services as long as I live,” she says. Sita was speaking as part of a webinar on the importance of ‘naming and faming’ for social accountability. Naming and faming refers to the process of celebrating the winners of our global Integrity Icon campaign. We find the best public servants and lift them up, supporting their work to encourage accountability and integrity in the public service. The conversation was co-hosted by Accountability Lab and the Global Partnership for Social Accountability at the World Bank. Listen to the recording here.

Sita is known as a committed health worker and also a friend to women and adolescent girls. Her programmes have been adopted as part of the Nepali government’s municipal agenda and have been implemented as a school education program for young women. 

Integrity means fulfilling your duties towards family, your profession and society, she says. Sita works in rural communities in Nepal, also giving advice and providing different options for family planning.

“Money is not a big deal. Helping someone, making them satisfied and bringing a smile to their faces is more important. I believe bringing a smile to the poor and needy allows you to sleep better at night than using a pillow made of money.”

She adds that she works hard to ensure that women and young girls’ sexual and reproductive health rights are respected. “It’s the individual with good character who endeavours to do good things. If a person commits to doing a task, then a single individual can also bring change,” she shares. 

KatieFuhs