OUR APPROACH

We go to the source, into the villages where girls are at risk, and put those girls into school. We counsel them and their families about the dangers of trafficking. By keeping at-risk girls in school and living at home, they are less vulnerable to being sold or lured by promises of jobs, only to find themselves in brothels or trapped as slaves in households. For a small investment – $100 pays for everything: school fees, books, school uniforms, tutoring – we can keep a girl safe for whole year. Persuading families to educate their daughters was slow going at first, but 10,000 girls later – without one being lost – the idea is gaining traction.    

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Dr. Aruna Uprety, our visionary partner, went to the brothels in India where more than a hundred thousand Nepali girls are trapped, hoping to convince some to come home. To her great surprise, they told her, “It’s too late for us. If we had known anything, if we had been able to go to school and learn and work, we would never have landed here. Please, keep this from happening to other girls.” The heartbreak of their situation pushed her to focus on prevention – breaking the cycle of trafficking from the start. She pioneered the approach of getting at-risk girls into school, and our partnership with her has saved thousands of young lives.

IT WORKS

In the beginning, it was hard to convince families that sending girls to school was worthwhile.  Fifteen years ago we started with 54 girls.  This year we have 9,500 in 400 schools across Nepal, and we haven’t lost one girl to trafficking.  Not one.  Reluctance to send girls to school is dropping away, and whole villages are asking to be included in our work.  Educating the most at-risk girls in a village spreads enough knowledge to keep traffickers at bay.

It works!  And our girls are successfully graduating from high school.  But public high school still ends at Grade 10 in Nepal and the girls are then only 16 years old.  Without their last two or three years of education – what we would think of as senior high or the beginning of junior college in this country - they are not qualified for most jobs and, young as they still are, are prime candidates for being trafficked. 

Having come so far and overcome such obstacles in their young lives, we felt it only right to commit to help these girls complete the last, critical step in their education – the one that qualifies them for jobs in teaching, health care, or business – and means they can serve their communities in significant ways.

This year we have 464 girls enrolled in this capstone step; it takes two to three years and costs only $400 per girl per year. Then they are truly safe – and on the way to create vastly better lives for themselves and their families.  They are change agents.