[Event Report] AWLF Online Summit Vol.10
Guest Speaker: Ms. Sangita Adhikari (Chair, AWLF Nepal Committee / Director, HUMAN RESOURCES Co., Ltd.)
On Friday, May 8, 2026, we hosted the tenth edition of our online summit series.
This month, we welcomed Ms. Sangita Adhikari, a social leader who has spent nearly two decades standing alongside Nepali women in Japan — through moments of crisis, vulnerability, and quiet everyday struggle — and turning her own experience of hardship into a lifelong commitment to others. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who participated and to Ms. Adhikari for sharing her journey with such warmth, honesty, and love.
The AWLF Online Summit serves as a “third place” where Asian women leaders come together across generations and borders for dialogue and mutual learning through shared stories and values.
■ Guest Speaker
Ms. Sangita Adhikari｜Chair, AWLF Nepal Committee / Director, HUMAN RESOURCES Co., Ltd. / Chair, Social Contribution Support Foundation
After coming to Japan from Nepal in 2004, Ms. Adhikari studied at a Japanese language school and later graduated from a specialist college before spending ten years at a major Japanese company. In 2016, she founded her own company, allowing her to pursue both her professional work and her community support activities with greater freedom.
For nearly twenty years, she has served the Nepali community in Japan through the Nepali Association in Japan — providing consultation, daily life support, and emotional care for women affected by domestic violence, supporting students navigating school fees, workplace harassment, and unfamiliar systems, and accompanying community members to hospitals as an interpreter. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she delivered food to over two to three hundred households door to door. She organized a nationwide blood donation drive that mobilized nearly 600 participants in a single day, covered by TBS news. She coordinated relief efforts during the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Nepal earthquake — always moving toward those in need, not away.
Currently, she is involved in the management of HUMAN RESOURCES Co., Ltd., which specializes in recruitment and support for Nepali talent, and serves as Chair of the AWLF Nepal Committee, contributing to women’s empowerment across borders and the development of next-generation leaders.
■ Highlights from the Keynote
“Even in the most negative experiences, something positive will always follow.”
Ms. Adhikari shared her personal journey with remarkable candor and warmth, from her earliest days in Japan to the community she has built over two decades:
- On her very first night missing the last train home, a stranger told her to get out of the way when she asked for help in broken Japanese — a moment she transformed into the resolve to master the language and build a life in Japan
- Running for vice chair of the Nepali Association in Japan one month after giving birth, travelling to Nagoya at four in the morning to campaign, and returning home only to be hospitalized the following day
- During COVID-19, delivering food to over two to three hundred households door to door — despite her family’s concerns — because “those families needed someone, and I could be that person”
- Organizing a blood donation drive that brought together nearly 600 participants across Japan in a single day, and coordinating charter flights of medical supplies to Nepal
At the heart of everything she shared was one quiet, enduring principle:
“I wanted people to know: if you are in trouble, you can go to Sangita. She will listen. That is the reputation I have spent twenty years building.”
Her words carried no grand declarations — only the accumulated weight of twenty years of showing up, again and again, with love.
■ From the Dialogue Session
The second half of the evening brought its own moments of depth and resonance:
- Ms. Chizu Sekine, who served as COO at a major Japanese conglomerate for four decades, shared that the key to navigating overwhelming challenges is to break them into small, actionable steps and simply keep moving forward — one thing at a time, without waiting for perfect conditions
- Ms. Haruko Iino, at 83 years old and still actively working as a PR professional, offered a message she has carried for a lifetime: “Believe that good things are coming — and they will. Even something as small as getting a large fries when you paid for a small one. That is how it starts.”
- A rich conversation emerged around why Nepal has become the second-largest source of international students in Japan, and what it means for both countries to build sustainable, mutually enriching cycles of human connection and development
Participants from Japan, Nepal, Myanmar, the Philippines, and beyond came together in a way that felt, unmistakably, like AWLF — a gathering where the words “global family” were not a slogan, but a lived experience.
■ Looking Ahead
AWLF continues to work toward its vision of cultivating one million women leaders from Asia by 2030, with a major international summit scheduled for September 2026 at the United Nations ESCAP headquarters in Bangkok, bringing together 300 Asian women leaders — including 100 youth leaders.
This online summit was yet another step toward that shared future: an evening where perspectives deepened, connections formed, and the good cycles we are building together grew a little stronger.
Our next online summit (Vol.11) will be held on Friday, June 12, 2026. We are honored to welcome Dr. Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela — Commissioner of the Commission on Higher Education in the Philippines and the first female Director of the SEAMEO Secretariat — a leader who has dedicated her career to advancing peace education, literacy, and global citizenship across Southeast Asia. We warmly invite you to join us.
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