Photo: Girls rescued from child labor and malnourishment are now safe and thriving at our orphanage home in Kathmandu.
This year in Nepal, thanks to your support, we’ve been able to rescue 3 more orphans from child labor, bringing our enrollment up to 23 children. Orphan children in Nepal are some of the most at-risk children on the planet, with the human trafficking crisis striking deep into the heart of this nation that is considered the poorest in all of Asia. Over 30% of Nepalese live on less than $12 per month.
Through the deceptive practices of human traffickers, over 12,000 Nepalese children are taken each year as slaves to other countries such as India, where they end up as child labor victims and child prostitutes. When orphan children come into our home they typically report having come from conditions where meals were often skipped and on many days, they only consumed one meal per day of very basic ingredients. As orphans are usually left with a relative like an aunt or uncle, and education is already considered a luxury, there is no chance at an education for an orphan in Nepal. Thus such orphan children are usually put to work at very young ages to help earn income for cash-strapped families.
Thanks to our farmland which grows various organic vegetables and raises goats for goat milk and stockbreeding, our work is growing toward sustainability in Nepal. The produce from our farmland stocks our orphanage pantry with nutritious ingredients for the children. It also supplies our human trafficking rehabilitation home with fresh ingredients for their meals. Surplus from the farmland is sold at market to generate much-needed funding for our programs.
Such funding, although not enough to sustain our entire program budget, has been enough to make a difference. Such an advantage has allowed us to bring in more orphans and rescue more girls from human trafficking than we would have if we had not had the farmland. And that’s a difference worth celebrating—it certainly has made a difference in the additional lives of those we were able to reach.
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