By Erica Stone | President
As the world shelters and slows, STOP Girl Trafficking is even more important to keep at-risk girls in Nepal safe. The whole country is on strict lockdown, and many parents are out of work and struggling. Laborers who travel to cities or India for work are returning home and bringing the risk of Covid to their villages without clinics or hospitals nearby. They have no choice; their jobs are gone. And none of them know when they’ll be able to return to work and earn money again.
This will put girls even more in danger from traffickers as parents lose their tiny incomes and become desperate, especially now that schools are closed, cutting girls off from vital safety nets. But Dr. Aruna Uprety and her team are keeping close track of the girls in SGT, staying in touch and getting the word out about how to stay safe right now – both from the virus and from predators who would take advantage.
The specter fast rising is hunger, looming over towns and villages alike. In the most vulnerable communities, where SGT girls live, it has already arrived. Aruna and her team are preparing to get emergency food relief to villages already in the shadow of hunger as soon as the lockdown lifts.
Meanwhile, SGT alums have started making face masks for their communities. One alum who had started a small sweater knitting factory has retooled to make masks as well. Talk about community role models!
This is a difficult time for everyone. We do not know what the coming months will bring as the pandemic crisis unfolds, but we are committed to keeping these girls safe and helping their families weather the storm. As Aruna recently reminded me, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Please, we need your help. Your kindness towards these at-risk girls will touch their lives in even more essential ways during this precarious time. When it is safe, they will pick up their school backpacks again and head into a more thoughtful, careful year. And you will have made that possible.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser