Some former child slaves are learning a trade -- and taking great pride -- in designing, creating and promoting their traditional Tharu attire.
About 20 young women from the Tharu community of Western Nepal who were sold as domestic child slaves in a practice known as Kamlari are enrolled in a training program to design and tailor their authentic native dress.
The intricately designed costumes are in high demand among Tharu girls and women.
Manjita Chaudhary, a young woman NYF rescued from indentured servitude 15 years ago, is leading the training program. NYF supports the popular program through its Vocational Education and Career Counseling program (VECC).
NYF has rescued more than 12,300 girls from the practice of Kamlari since it launched its Indentured Daughters Program in 2000 and is now working to ensure that the girls become healthly, happy, independent young women.
The vocational training programs help to stimulate the cultural and economic development needed to ensure that no child will become a victim of Kamlari again.
Our staff provides structured counseling sessions and assessment tests, and then helps girls enroll in top quality training programs for a wide variety of careers. 82 percent of our graduates are currently employed - a remarkable achievement given that the unemployment rate in Nepal is 40-46 percent.
Thank you for your generous support.
Namaste!
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We launched our Indentured Daughters Program in 2000 with an audacious goal -- to end the practice of Kamlari, the system in which girls from desperately poor families were sold into domestic slavery.
Since then, Nepal Youth Foundation has rescued over 12,300 girls and returned them to their home communities, importantly, our advocacy work helped persuade the government to officially affirm the abolition of Kamlari and allocate millions of dollars to educate girls who were officially victims of the system.
But rescuing the girls isn't enough. Every one of them has suffered traumatic loss and abuse during their childhood and has been deprived of an education. They'll need support well into young adulthood in order to thrive and make their place in the world.
Our new Empowering Freed Kamari’s program (EFK) is helping the rescued girls become healthy, happy, independent young women, while stimulating the cultural and economic development needed to ensure that no child will ever become a victim of Kamlari again.
This year our various EFK activities served more than 8,000 girls and young women.
Leadership Training With support from NYF, the girls formed their own action group in 2010 - the Freed Kamlari Development Forum (FKDF), which has grown to include 1,375 members. Our EFK staff provides them with training in leadership skills, organizational management, political literacy, accounting and entrepreneurship.
Economic Development There are 37 FKDF business co-ops with nearly 3,000 members. We provided $40,000 to start their co-op loan fund, and 762 young women have now launched their own businesses and reinvested $40,000 back into the fund.
Vocational Training We provide assessment tests and counseling, and then help girls enroll in top-quality training programs. This year, 355 girls developed marketable skills in agriculture, engineering, computer technology, healthcare and more.
Psychological Support With training and supervision from the staff of our Ankur Counseling Center, FKDF peer counselors provide emotional support for former Kamari’s. There are now 50 FKDF peer counselors and five assistant counselors conducting 145 monthly support groups with 2,025 participants.
Thank you for helping us to do this important work.
Namaste!
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We have changed the name of our Indentured Daughters Program to Empowering Freed Kamlari because we accomplished what we set out to do in 2000 and have helped bring to an end the terrible practice of child slavery in Nepal known as Kamlari.
NYF is now helping thousands of these former indentured servants move towards a brighter future by offering them education, counseling, job skills, advocacy training, and economic support.
An estimated 300 Kamlari remain in servitude, and we will continue this important work to secure their freedom. Our focus now is on helping the more than 12,000 girls we have rescued build new and productive lives.
This is how we are doing it:
In 2014, NYF’s Empowering Freed Kamlari Program has helped to put thousands of formerly indentured daughters on the path of freedom and self-reliance.
Thank you for helping to make a brighterr future for these girls!
Namaste!
Links:
Dear Friends,
The day of the Maghe Sankranti festival this year, January 15, 2014, was a very special one for the daughters of the Tharu community of Western Nepal. Unlike past festivals, they didn’t have to worry that their parents would sell them off as “Kamlari,’ or indentured servants.
“Kamlari Freedom Day” — celebrated with a march, and many speeches by government “thulo manchhes” (big shots) — was also special for me. It was a once-in-a-lifetime-I-never-thought-I’d-see-the-day event!
NYF ignited a movement
Since 2000, NYF has been working to eradicate this pernicious custom by liberating over 12,000 girls from bondage and bringing them home to live with their families, providing their parents with a piglet or a goat to make up for the girls’ wages, placing the liberated girls in school, and carrying out an energetic awareness campaign to turn the Tharu mothers and fathers against the practice. This, along with lawsuits against employers who persisted in enslaving their little girl servants and heavy lobbying with the government, has brought freedom not only to the present generation of child servants, but to their daughters and their daughters’ daughters as well.
As I sat on the stage for what seemed hours, I harkened back to the time of my first visit to Dang thirteen years ago, almost to the day. That time, the context was entirely different. I thought of the little orphan girl I saw that day sobbing relentlessly by her uncle’s side, begging not to be sent back to work for her callous employer — while her uncle told us, without shame, that he had sold her and her sister to pay for the cost of his son’s wedding.
Freedom for future generations
I was similarly clueless about what was being said by the many speakers on Kamlari Freedom Day, but I knew with certainty that that little girl did not spend the rest of her childhood as a kitchen slave, and that this was true of other Tharu girls of her generation and generations to come. The proof was before my eyes, as I looked down at a sea of faces of freed, assertive former Kamlari, including 30 who had just passed their college entrance examinations and were headed for higher education.
When it came my turn to speak, I wish I could have just shouted the Tharu equivalent of “You go girls!”
Thank you everyone, for supporting NYF through the years and helping to make this amazing new freedom possible.
With appreciation,
Olga Murray
Founder & Honorary President
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Renu was a fifth grader in her local village school when her dad had a bad accident and could no longer support the family. Desperate, he "sold" Renu into a contract of indentured servitude and sent the 12-year old to work as a Kamlari — essentially, a household slave — for a family in a city far from her home.
While her "employer" promised to send Renu to school, he gave her so much work that she was unable to attend the local elementary school. Instead, she studied on her own late at night after a grueling day of sweeping, mopping and fetching fodder for the family’s animals.
“As a Kamlari, I was constantly working,” Renu said. “I started at 3 a.m. and often didn’t finish until midnight. It took everything to stay up to study.”
As part of its campaign to end the practice of Kamlari, Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF) rescued Renu in 2000 after five years as an indentured servant. She was 17 years old.
Smart and hardworking, Renu received a scholarship and finished her studies, passing the difficult School Leaving Certificate exam, a test required of all Nepalis to complete high school. She joined NYF’s Vocational Education and Counseling Center program (VECC) and completed the 18-month Auxiliary Nurse Midwife training program.
She now earns 15,000 rupees ($150) a month — good money in this impoverished country — delivering babies at a small clinic in Western Nepal.
Renu is also continuing her work towards a bachelor’s degree — again, working late into the night studying.
“This is different,” she said. “I don’t mind studying now. I am lucky to have this opportunity. “
Since 2000, NYF has rescued nearly 13,000 girls from the Kamlari system, and was instrumental in causing the government of Nepal in 2013 to officially ban Kamlari once and for all. Today, NYF focuses on providing former Kamlaris with the education, job skills, emotional counseling, and business opportunities they need to ensure a brighter future.
”I am happy that the next generation of girls will never have to go through what I have been through,” Renu said.
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