Freeing Nepali Girls From Indentured Servitude
Location
Provide a goat or piglet to families that do not sell their daughters into indentured servitude, sponsor the girls' education, and mobilize communities against servitude.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sector Focus
Civil society
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2000
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Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Cultural acceptance of enslavement
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Mobilize peer groups and communities to raise awareness
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Name Your Project
Freeing Nepali Girls From Indentured Servitude
Describe Your Idea
Provide a goat or piglet to families that do not sell their daughters into indentured servitude, sponsor the girls' education, and mobilize communities against servitude.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Provide a goat or piglet to families that do not sell their daughters into indentured servitude, sponsor the girls' education, and mobilize communities against servitude.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
In Western Nepal, many families are so impoverished that they have been forced to sell their daughters to work far away as bonded servants. The income from selling the girls is often essential to provide for the other children. 10,000 to 15,000 young girls in Nepal are victims of this abhorrent tradition each year.
The living conditions of the enslaved girls are entirely at the discretion of their employers. They have no prospects for a decent future. Many are abused, and some are forced into prostitution.
NYOF and its partner organization, Friends of Needy Children (FNC), convince parents to bring their daughters home and send them to school. To compensate them for the income from selling their daughters, NYOF gives each family a piglet or a goat, pays for the girl’s education, and provides her with school supplies and a kerosene lamp so she can study at night.
NYOF also organizes awareness campaigns in the communities, and encourages former victims to form clubs that discourage parents from selling their daughters.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
NYOF’s awareness campaign begins with posters, leaflets, and radio broadcasts. NYOF also organizes girls who are former enslaved laborers into activist clubs. These girls perform street plays about the anguish of indentured servitude and talk to parents about the problems of bonding and the benefits of education.
Following the awareness program, NYOF’s staff convinces parents to allow their daughters to go to school instead of being bonded. To truly “save” a girl, she must be enrolled in the program for several years.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
NYOF’s goal is to completely eradicate the custom of enslaving of girls throughout Nepal and provide a model to eliminate child bonding worldwide. Rather than attempting to single-handedly rescue every indentured girl, NYOF is collaborating with other organizations that have more funds at their disposal. NYOF’s strategy is to begin its successful awareness program in communities where bonded servitude occurs to turn the communities against the custom, rescue several hundred girls, and then invite other organizations to help finish the job. While NYOF has successfully eliminated the custom of child slavery from its first target area, Nepal’s Dang district, and is beginning to eradicate the custom in Bardiya district, the tradition persists in three other districts in Nepal and a number of other developing countries.
This program will produce a sustained change throughout Nepal by empowering women and helping them to break the cycles of illiteracy and poverty, in addition to eliminating the practice of indentured servitude.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
Before NYOF and its partner organization FNC began their work, no one in Nepal addressed the problem of families selling their daughters into bonded servitude. NYOF’s staff, led by Man Bahadur Chhetri, has now trained members of several other NGOs to replicate NYOF’s model. Other organizations are interested in receiving instruction in these methods.
PLAN International, in collaboration with a local NGO named SWAN, is successfully expanding the program into the Banke district of Nepal. Room to Read is also collaborating with NYOF and is providing the education for many newly freed girls. Other NGOs that are implementing the program are preparing to expand their operations to new areas. More organizations are inquiring about replicating the model, including an NGO in India, where child slavery is also common.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
NYOF’s objective is to completely eradicate the custom of child slavery in Nepal, and to provide a model from eliminating similar practices throughout the world.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
NYOF has encountered some obstacles to the implementation of this program which will continue to be considerations in the future. Most importantly, many people in the target areas are illiterate, which limits the effectiveness of the distribution of information through flyers or brochures. However, community-based initiatives such as street plays, radio announcements, and the formation of anti-bonding clubs have all proven to be highly effective and sustainable methods to increase public awareness about the plight of enslaved servants and the importance of education for girls.
Furthermore, although the Maoist insurgency in Nepal has ended, the country still suffers from conflict and the central government is in a state of flux. Nevertheless, these problems have not interfered with the success of the Indentured Daughters Program, and the country is more politically stable than it has been in past years.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
NYOF’s Indentured Daughters Program has proven to be immensely successful and readily replicable on a larger scale. The program has completely eliminated the tradition of bonding girls from Dang district in Nepal, and it is rapidly spreading through other districts.
Directly
Since the program began in 2000, NYOF has rescued 2,220 girls from bonded servitude. 1,670 of them are still being educated through the program, while the older girls have graduated. Furthermore, to accommodate the increase in the number of girls attending school in the program area, NYOF has built 36 new classrooms and provided training for the additional teachers needed.
Other NGOs that have been trained to follow NYOF’s model have saved even more girls. For example, PLAN International has collaborated with SWAN to rescue 1,200 girls in just one year. Overall, the number of girls rescued from slavery as a result of this innovative program exceeds 4,500.
NYOF is already beginning to eradicate indentured servitude from the Bardiya district of Nepal, where about 2000 girls are indentured annually, and the organization plans to rescue all of the 10,000 to 15,000 Nepali girls who are enslaved every year.
Indirectly
Because the Indentured Daughters Program raises awareness in families about the importance of educating girls and raising them at home, the sisters of the girls who are rescued are also protected from bonded servitude. When these girls have children of their own, they are highly unlikely to sell their daughters into slavery.
Furthermore, since better-educated females have fewer children and are more apt to educate their children, the benefits of the Indentured Daughters Program will be passed on to future generations in the form of improved access to education and smaller family sizes. Finally, educating impoverished girls empowers them and grants them new opportunities, thereby providing all of Nepal with greater resources for development. An example of this is the large number of girls rescued by the program who want to become social workers.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
The program’s success is clearly demonstrated by the number of girls who have been saved from slavery. Furthermore, although this practice has been entrenched in the traditions of Western Nepal for generations, NYOF eliminated it from Dang District in only eight years. NYOF’s accomplishments have shown that once public opinion has turned against indentured servitude, the custom does not return. Another indicator of the effectiveness of the program is the number of awards and prizes that NYOF has received for this initiative.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
Before NYOF began the Indentured Daughters Program, enslaved girls had no legal protection. Now, due to a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court by a graduate of one of NYOF’s scholarship programs, it is illegal to buy children in Nepal. Although this law is not adequately enforced and bonded servitude is still common practice in many areas, it provides NYOF’s staff with greater authority to rescue girls from their owners.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
NYOF’s Indentured Daughters Program benefits girls and their families who live in impoverished communities in rural Western Nepal. As the program continues to be replicated by other NGOs, the beneficiaries will grow to include enslaved children in many developing countries.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
It costs only US$ 100 to rescue a girl from servitude, sponsor her education for one year, pay for school-related expenses, and provide her family with a piglet or goat as compensation for the girl’s wages.
Furthermore, a local NGO is implementing a microfinance project which enables mothers of formerly indentured children to initiate businesses such as henna farming and creating local crafts. Microlending enables the families to provide continued education for their children.
The Indentured Daughters Program is funded by grants from private foundations and donations by individual supporters. Some of the foundations have invited NYOF to submit further applications for grants for this program, and others have pledged ongoing support. Donors gave more to the program last year than in any previous year.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization
Budget for 2007-2008 fiscal year: US$ 1,572,526
Projected revenue for 2007-2008 fiscal year: US$ 1,201,068
NYOF has 4 staff members in the U.S. and 7 in Nepal. NYOF’s Nepal-based partner organization, Friends of Needy Children, has 97 staff members in Nepal.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Although the custom of enslaving girls is common in a number of developing countries, the families do not want to sell their daughters. They only participate in this tradition because without the additional income from bonding, they would not be able to feed their other children. The families that have benefited from NYOF’s program are delighted to be able to keep their daughters at home. There is a great demand from these communities for an alternative way to make ends meet.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
In the eight years since the inception of the Indentured Daughters Program, funding from both foundations and individual donors has grown substantially. As the program’s highly effective approach for eradicating slavery and low cost of US$ 100 per child are very compelling, it has received continued funding. Furthermore, collaborations with other NGOs ensure that diverse and sustained sources of funding will be available for this initiative.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
When Olga Murray became aware that child slavery is an accepted practice in parts of Nepal, she visited the Dang District and discovered that the root of the problem is simply that the families could not survive without the income from their daughters' labor. Horrific as this practice is, the poverty in the area is severe and it is not difficult to have some sympathy for the parents. Some families have 10 or 12 children.
Initially, NYOF asked 37 families to bring their indentured daughters home. As an incentive, NYOF promised the families that if they allowed their daughters to live at home and attend school (at NYOF's expense) instead of being sent off to work, they would be compensated for their daughters' lost wages.
At first NYOF planned to reimburse the families in cash, but after investigating the rural communities, NYOF’s staff found that alcoholism is rife in the community, and the mothers begged them not to give money to their husbands. So instead of money, NYOF gave each participating family a piglet or a goat, which they could raise on kitchen scraps and ultimately sell for about the sum they received for their child's labor. NYOF also offered a kerosene lamp and two liters of kerosene a month - items of great value in this area without electricity.
The girl herself received a school uniform, schoolbooks (imprinted with a slogan against indentured servitude), pencils, a book bag, and most importantly, an education.
Now, the Indentured Daughters Program is under the expert leadership of Man Bahadur Chhetri. Man grew up in Western Nepal, where the program takes place, and has a deep understanding of the local culture. He is deeply committed to eradicating the bonding of Nepali children.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
When Olga Murray first visited Nepal in l984 and saw the terribly impoverished condition of the children, she resolved that she would return to help them. She started by giving scholarships to disabled and neglected children.
To help these children in an organized way, Olga founded the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF) in 1990 to provide the most impoverished children of Nepal with education, housing, medical care, and loving support. Olga still leads NYOF and spends half of every year in Nepal.
Emphasis of Work
The emphasis of NYOF’s Indentured Daughters Program is to rescue girls who have been enslaved, and to generate a cultural shift in the regions where this practice occurs to protect girls from being enslaved in the future.
 | Amelia Forrest Kaye said: On July 16, 2008, the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Competition and would like to pass on the ... about this Competition Entry. - 1265 days ago read more > |
| Freeing Nepali Girls From Indentured Servitude has been chosen as a finalist in Ending Global Slavery: Everyday Heroes Leading the Way. - 1294 days ago |
| mattflax said: Your program is very impressive. Raising a goat or piglet replaces the income lost for bonding a daughter. This is net income that ... about this Competition Entry. - 1340 days ago read more > |
| ktb said: I actually have two questions about the program. The practice of not giving cash really grabbed my attention--I appreciate that level ... about this Competition Entry. - 1349 days ago read more > |
Comments
I actually have two questions about the program. The practice of not giving cash really grabbed my attention--I appreciate that level of cultural awareness. Do you think that the recent ouster of the Nepali royal family will help with your efforts? Does this signify an additional movement away from tradition in the country?
Also, has there been any interest in mobilizing awareness in the climbing community? I know that the Nepali government relies heavily on tourist and climbing dollars for revenue--would those people be a good fit to approach for donations and support?
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Portland State University MBA
Your program is very impressive.
Raising a goat or piglet replaces the income lost for bonding a daughter. This is net income that evens out by replacing a set amount lost with a set amount gained. Is there a way to educate the parents or provide training to generate future and sustainable income in addition to replacing the lost income?
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Portland State University, Current Student
On July 16, 2008, the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Competition and would like to pass on the following feedback for your entry. Thank you for applying and for your hard work in the field. We are excited to archive your entry to serve as a leading solution for the worldwide community of innovators who are exposing, confronting and ending modern day slavery. We wish you continued luck with your sustainable, innovative, and socially impactful initiatives.
All the best, The Changemakers Team
“This is an innovative approach that has succeeded in educating parents and helping Nepali families gain access to a small but tangible income. The result is the rescue and education of thousands of girls who were once involved in indentured servitude. It is a proven model that demonstrates that US $100 and one year can truly make a difference in the life of a Nepali girl.”
“This grassroots effort is practical, replicable, and sustainable. This organization would really benefit from seed funding and would utilize it effectively. I would encourage them to consider incorporating a micro-lending model into their financial plan in order to move the organization toward financial self-sustainability.”
- Changemakers “Ending Global Slavery” Judges: United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking, International Organization for Migration, Design Within Reach, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Humanity United.
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The Changemakers Team
Ashoka's Changemakers