By Janis Olson | Executive Director
This year NYOF will accomplish the first stage in our long term goal of completely eradicating the practice of young Nepali girls being sold into slavery by their families. We first began this program in the year 2000 when we were able to rescue 32 girls. The number of girls saved has grown to over 3,400. We would not have been able to achieve this goal without the support of our donor community. Their response to our need has been amazing!
By the end of January 2008, NYOF will have completely eliminated this practice in the Dang Valley. We will have rescued every girl that was going to be sold into bonded servitude. We are now able to move on to an adjoining valley and continue our goal of rescuing the 20,000 to 25,000 girls sold yearly into bonded servitude. NYOF wants to achieve this goal by the year 2010.
During mid-January the labor contractors descend on the villages in Nepal. They convince the families to sell their daughters (some as young as six) for approximately $40 or $50. The girls receive nothing, and are sent off to far away places. The families lose all contact. The girls work from dawn to dusk. None of these children receive an education. Many never return home. The situation is tailor made for abuse.
NYOF convinces the families to keep their daughters at home. We give the families a piglet or goat that they can raise on food scraps and sell for more money than they would have received for their daughters. NYOF sends these girls to school and pays all of their expenses. NYOF enlarges the classrooms, instructs the teachers, pays for all supplies, uniforms, books, and even provides kerosene lamps so the girls may study at night as there is no electricity.
NYOF will not be able to achieve its long term goal without our continued donor support. It only costs $100 to rescue a girl from bonded servitude. We hope you will join us in this worthwhile effort.
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.
