At the Freedom School in Nuwakot, Nepal, the team has moved from crisis response to a longer term anti-trafficking strategy. In the 3 weeks following the disaster, our staff and teens jumped into action, collecting, packing and distributing truckloads of emergency supplies to two villages devastated by the flood: Dunche, a 12 hour drive from the school, near the Tibet border, and Dharapani, about 4 hours from the school. The roads have been damaged by the rainy season and by the influx of rescue and relief vehicles, making for a long and difficult journey.
Thankfully the need for emergency supplies has ended in these and many other areas, as the government and large relief agencies, as well as many smaller organizations like ours, have risen to meet the need. Many orphaned children and people who were living in the most geologically unstable or uninhabitable areas have been relocated to Holding Centers in Kathmandu. Others have gone to live with family members in other parts of Nepal.
And so, we have moved into our long term strategy: working with local leaders to prevent girls from being trafficked or exploited in this chaotic time. We know from experience that traffickers become very active after a natural disaster (like the 2015 earthquakes), and unfortunately all of our partners and local contacts are reporting that the traffickers are very active in Nepal right now. This article explains why.
Building a community safety net
Anjali has hired a Community Liaison in each village – (Lari and Kumar pictured at right). Their role from this point forward will be to identify the most vulnerable girls and families for longer term support. This longer term support will include scholarships, because we have seen again and again that education is the best way to prevent trafficking. We will support children to attend boarding schools in their home districts, or to come to our own school and shelter. Working through the education network PABSON, we are currently providing support for disadvantaged children whose schools were destroyed in the flood to transfer to other schools.
UNICEF estimates that over 17,000 have been severely impacted by the floods, having been orphaned, lost their homes, or had their schools or communities destroyed. Girls in these remote areas of Nepal were already at high risk of trafficking, due to poverty, the low status of women, no access to education, and the normalization of trafficking. Anjali and I talk a lot about these root causes in our book, because in her case, the death of a parent and loss of income resulting from that, and the closing of her local school, alongside the widespread acceptance of trafficking in the community, directly led to her being trafficked. She is determined to prevent that from happening to other girls – both in her home village and now in the villages affected by the flood.
College girls resettlement
In July, we sent five young women from our shelter to attend college in Bidur, 1.5 hours from the Freedom School. Bidur was one of the towns devastated by the flood. Thankfully, the college is at the top of a steep hill and the girls were already walking up the hill when the flood came. They flagged down a truck who brought them back to the Freedom School, very shaken but unharmed.
The college building is on very unstable ground. Once there were many buildings and streets between the college and the river now on the edge of a steep cliff. So, the college has to move to a new location before it can reopen. Anjali thought the girls might be too afraid to return to Bidur, but they courageously decided to return. We are renting a new apartment for them next week (on higher ground), and they will study remotely until the college reopens. Once the college reopens, we hope to work with them to identify girls who lost their families or homes in the flood, and support them to continue their education, also providing long term emotional support.
The situation continues to evolve, and the team is committed to remaining flexible and responsive to the needs of the community.
HFC has been serving girls in Nuwakot for over a decade. Over the past 5 years, together with survivor-activist Anjali Tamang, we have been operating the Freedom School – an education and trafficking prevention project.