Girl saved from trafficking in Nepal.

“Look! This is what’s going on around you! This is the problem – fact! Open your eyes to the needs of your children!” This is what one group of 5 Christian leaders heard when they recently attended a Viva partners meeting in the small Nepalese town of Nuwakot.

“We want to help” the five leaders proclaimed to Viva network staff. “We truly do, but we don’t know how! We see this problem everyday here in Nuwakot. Women and girls treated as if they were nothing, being abused as if it were the God-given right of their “possessors”. Desperate girls have turned up on our doorstep pleading for help as they attempt to flee their abusers. But what can we do?” One of the leaders, Makol, insisted. “What can we mere 5 people possibly do to change a situation that is so deeply rooted in our society?” The desperation was marked by the fine lines that creased his forehead due to the days, months and years of worrying for his people.


 

And Makol and his friends are right. In parts of Nepal giving birth to a daughter calls for celebration as it means that, later on, she will generate a considerable amount of income for her family. Trafficking has plagued the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal for many decades and it poses the main threat to the livelihoods of its children. Hundreds of thousands of young girls grow up in fear of the brutal destiny that awaits them: being sold into brothels in the red light districts of Kolkata, Siliguri, Kanpuir, New Delhi and Mumbai. And their parents rejoice in this as a success for the family…

When a problem is so culturally embedded in a society, providing emergency help and intervention is just simply not enough. This is why Viva and our partners in Nepal created “Daughter Project”, to help ministries and Christian groups, like the one Makol belongs to, prevent, as well as intervene in, situations of child trafficking. Daughter exposes and challenges the root causes and consequences of child abuse, sexual exploitation and trafficking in 9 regions along the Nepal-India border. The vision is to engage and raise awareness among communities about the realities of child sexual abuse and exploitation, so that these communities can be an informed and united voice on behalf of victims and survivors.

Makol and the 4 other Christian leaders are not alone; there are people willing to help but they just don’t know how. So it’s all a case of building the confidence in these people and instilling them with the belief that they can help, by encouraging them to break it down into sizeable chunks that their capacities will allow. "The strength of these particular Christian leaders is that they come from a town in the interior of Nepal. The area they live in is where trafficking is normally in its primary stages,” said a Viva partner volunteer present at the meeting. “Makol and his friends live in a tight-knit community. Using their status as pillars of the community they can get close to the families and work on strengthening the family unit. We must work with families to try and break the cycle of abuse and the cultural conflict that surrounds it in our country.”

A few weeks later, Makol and his friends had started working with their local community, holding awareness workshops using the “Daughter” toolkit and working with families. “We actually saved a girl from being trafficked!” Makol beamed in one of the feedback sessions with network workers. “She was going to be sent to India and we managed to save her and get her back to her family! It actually works! Thanks to our awareness campaigns the community spoke for itself as a united front against trafficking and the news got back to us,” he excitingly recounted to anyone eager to listen. After this, and with the help of Makol and the friends of other Christian leaders, this same community was then able to address the root cause – help strengthen families and encourage them to celebrate their children instead of treating them as possessions.

This is a story of one girl who was rescued from a life of who knows what abuse and torture and that is thanks to the work of 5 people. Viva and our partners in Nepal are equipping these willing people with the know-how to help girls and families together. On seeing this amazing ability to mobilise communities that “Daughter” has, other leaders have since joined forces with Makol in the fight against this problem that is so heavily engrained in local Nepalese culture. This is a great success for Viva’s work!

Watch this space as we report on how our “Daughter” grows from here…