Help Former Child Slaves on their Path to Freedom

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

Links:

• Nepal Youth Foundation

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.

Links:

• Nepal Youth Foundation