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.

Breaking taboos in Bangalore.

Many people in the UK think that children are learning about sex too early. Magazines, television and the Internet have made it a familiar topic for most young people before they even reach secondary school. But in Bangalore, India, it seems that children may be learning about it too late.

“Sex education does not happen in most of India,” says Karuna Sagili, from Viva’s Delhi office. “All matters of the body and sexuality and sex are seen as taboo. In one school in Bangalore the teachers have stuck some pages together in the biology textbooks, so that children would not look at the pictures often. It is photos of a man and a woman, and all the parts of the body.”

Running for Their Lives

Remember this? “Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.”

Viva posted that back in May. But long before that my heart was broken by the hundreds of thousands of girls in Cambodia who are in this exact situation. I don’t even want to imagine it. But child sexual exploitation in Cambodia is something the world can’t avoid imagining. We need to be confronted with it, address it, end it, and then help to heal the girls who have gone through it.

Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

Saving Girls from Sexual Slavery

You may have read my post about a trip to Nepal this summer when, along with six child care professionals in business suits, I travelled eight hours by bus and spent the night in a church, in order to attend an important graduation. (I might mention that on the way we saw a lorry tip off the road and get pulled up again by just five men with a rope and pulley – the power of working together!) Celebrating this graduation wasn’t the only thing I did in Nepal though. I also checked up on what’s happening with the Daughter programme, which is now being run by 145 churches around Nepal. 

Girls reading the Daughter leaflet

Many people think of Nepal as a ‘shangri-la’ of mountains, centring around Kathmandu – a hippie haven filled with bright flags and colourfully dressed locals. Less popular with tourists and foreign imaginations are the southern plains that produce most of Nepal’s agriculture and border with India. It’s here that Daughter is having the biggest impact, because it’s here that children are taken from (or sometimes sold by) their families into bonded labour, circuses, and sexual slavery in India’s cities and Nepal’s brothels. What I have for you now are some stories about how Christians working together are saving real children from a life of slavery and abuse.

Daughters in Danger

Nepal has captured the world’s imagination for centuries. Until recently it was known to the world as a Himalayan Hindu Kingdom, though in 2008 it became a Democratic Republic after 10 years of Maoist insurgency. It’s also the home of Mt. Everest and eight of the world’s ten highest mountains. It’s caught between India and China and currently hosts more than 100,000 refugees from Bhutan.

Thanks to their long and interconnected history, Nepalis can travel to India with no visa and work there without any restrictions. While this is great for adults seeking their fortune in their giant southern neighbour’s cities, it means all sorts of trouble for Nepali children. It’s estimated that up to 7,000 women and children are trafficked across Nepal’s porous borders into India every year, where they’re forced into prostitution – 20% of these are under 16. Nepali females are easy prey: while 69% of males in Nepal are literate, only 42% of females are. As a result of this lack of education and inability to stand up for themselves, 200,000 children of Nepali prostitutes are thought to be living in Indian brothels.

MDG's Part 4: Gender Equality

If I’m totally honest, I’ve often thought of gender equality with a yawn and a roll of my eyes. (I’m a woman, so that’s kind of allowed!) It reminds me of militant bra-waving feminism, and in my own experience I’ve never been discriminated against for my gender, so it’s just never been an issue. But as I’ve looked into it further, I’ve discovered that ‘Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women’ is actually a one of the most important Millennium Development Goals to strive for.

In western nations women are pretty much free from oppression. But if you take a look at countries such as India and Nepal, or throughout the Middle East, you see that there is still much work to be done. In India for example the culture of paying a dowry still exists (a ‘bride-price’ paid to the groom by the girl’s family, either money or goods) and it is taking the lives of thousands of women each year – millions if you count unborn girls.

Kids and the World Cup

Blow your vuvuzela, get flag socks on your wing mirrors, make your way to a fan zone…the World Cup is about to arrive in Africa!

Around South Africa, the atmosphere is reaching fever pitch. Arriving in Johannesburg airport, the first thing I saw was a giant football floating in the air to let everyone know that this was a host city. Fans in all colours were queuing at immigration, the most memorable being a Mexican in his green shirt, big hat, comedy sunglasses and a replica trophy!

So who will win the World Cup? After my next flight to Cape Town, I was whisked to a church in a township that was participating in Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer. I asked the children of the township the same question, and was deafened by the shout of “South Africa!!”

Little Shoes on Brothel Doorsteps

Imagine walking down an alley in the red light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city – filled with brothels, karaoke bars and massage parlours. Lined up on each doorstep are countless pairs of shoes belonging to the women forced to work inside. Looking closer you can see that a sickening number of these shoes are very small, belonging to the little girls who are either being raised by prostitutes or have been forced to become sex workers themselves.

Close to 100,000 girls are right now enslaved in Cambodia by sex tourism, pornography, forced child marriages and prostitution. The number of these girls who have been sold into the sex trade by members of their own families is shockingly high. Imagine the impact that would have on a little girl’s soul. Not only is her innocence taken from her, but she feels she can’t trust her own family. A typical response is to turn to drugs and forget the pain. Diseases like AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections are common. If she somehow escapes and goes home, her family and friends turn their backs on her because of her profession.

So what can we do?