Stop Girl Trafficking in Nepal

This young girl is part of our Stop Girl Trafficking partnership. She’s one of 10,500 girls in 519 schools across Nepal who’s no longer at terrible risk of being sold, forced into slavery or child marriage. What will her life be like after graduation?

We have been sending at-risk girls to school long enough now that we are seeing many of them finish and graduate – and that’s very exciting. So I was curious to spend time with some of the new grads and girls in their last year. They came into Kathmandu by bus from all around and we gathered for a few hours to drink tea, eat sweets (very important!) and talk about their lives. 

I was knocked out by their knowledge and their confidence. They were not afraid to speak up, they knew the fate they had avoided and they were volubly thankful. About half wanted to teach, to turn their education into something that could help other girls; some wanted to be nurses; and a surprising number would opt for being entrepreneurs if they could manage it. It was interesting to hear their hopes and dreams, and what the shadows were in their lives. 

Their lives are still not easy. But they have skills and they are not afraid of the future. They understand that, as almost always the first generation of girls in their villages to be educated, they are at the leading edge of change for women in Nepal.  And they take that responsibility, and that chance, seriously.

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Life started out hard for Rekha and her sister Shanti. Their father died soon after Shanti was born and their mother abandoned both girls shortly after that. Fortunately, their grandmother took them in and, despite her own scant means, enrolled them in the local government school. However, when Rekha reached grade six and Shanti grade four, the money ran out. It was at this point their lives diverged. Rekha started working as a farmhand and paid her own way through middle school. Shanti dropped out and an aunt took her to Kathmandu to work as a domestic servant, where she stayed for seven years. Rekha came to our attention when she entered eighth grade, which in Nepal has the highest incidence of dropout, and we invited her to join Stop Girl Trafficking.

“The support came as a huge relief – I was able to continue school despite my financial circumstances,” Rekha wrote me after we met during my recent visit to Makwanpur. “I attended school every morning and worked the day shift afterwards. And I still managed to come first in my class in grade eleven, and second in grade twelve!”

Meanwhile, Shanti returned to Makwanpur and worked as a cook. Two years later, at age fifteen, she got married. Married life is not what she expected it to be. Her husband’s family is very poor and at nineteen she already has two children. As Rekha told me, “she is not too happy.”

After graduation, Rekha enrolled herself in college and went through a training program to teach groups of girls about family planning and violence against women. She completed the program and a friend suggested she start volunteering for SGT in her spare time. Six months later, impressed with her work ethic and intelligence, we put her on staff. Rekha is now a college senior studying education and, along with two other staff members, she manages over 1,000 girls and young women from our field office in Makwanpur.

We are so proud to have Rekha on the SGT team!

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