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05 October 2020 Speaker Empowering Girls in Nepal

Empowering Girls in Nepal 5 October 2020

Speaker: Pauline Panter

On 5 October 2020 Pauline Panter from Bedford Club spoke to us about Empowering Girls in Nepal, for which she is an ambassador. This collaboration between ChoraChori and Sigbi is the Federation’s charity project for 2019-22.

Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, is a patriarchal society: girls are regarded as worthless; once married, women must stay at home; old women are left to starve. Conditions are really hard for children, especially girls. If parents go to prison, the children go too. There is much exploitation, drugs and abuse. Families are so poor that many children are sold to India and China to work as circus acrobats and trafficking is rife.

Empowering Girls in Nepal was started in about 2012 by Philip Holmes, who spent time in Nepal as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the army and was a former volunteer at Yarls Wood. His first wife, Esther Benjamins, a barrister very interested in social justice, was unable to have children. Spurred on by a line in her suicide note in which she said that ‘life without children had become unbearable’, Philip Holmes decided to leave the army and help children in Nepal. He learned the language and spent two years finding out about conditions there. After that he tried to change the law and set up a charity to support the children – who were disappearing.

ChoraChori, a UK-registered charity whose name means children, has rescued around a thousand children in four to five years. It concentrates on rehabilitation, education and training for trafficked, abused and vulnerable girls, with the aim of making them confident, self-sufficient and independent young women, the role models and community leaders of the future.

Its goal is to raise £105,000 in three years. To date it has £50,000, mostly from Big Story. In December 2019 ChoraChori opened a 30-bed safe and secure halfway-house hostel with 8 girls in residence, most of them rape victims. Here 45 girls will be trained and educated each year, 12 in formal education, 8 in non-formal education and 20 on a basic tailoring course. Girls are allowed to keep the sewing machine they have been using so they can make a living when they return to their community. There are also 7 girls in a silver jewellery workshop and a dedicated knot craft weaving (macraméé) training space in Dhanusha, south Nepal, where natural fibres are used to make stylish furniture.

Nepal has been badly hit by Covid-19. Earlier this year its people were placed under a strict three-month total lockdown but with little support from the authorities. Parts of the country are still recovering from the 2015 earthquake and there is massive poverty. Women are hardest hit, especially in rural areas, where there is little healthcare. Schools are not back. Travel restrictions are still in place and there is no tourism or international supply chains. The government relies heavily on overseas funding – 30% of GDP is from external sources – but this has now dried up. External volunteer support is also unlikely for the foreseeable future.

When the pandemic hit, girls on the various courses were sent home. The hostel was closed and remains so, and all foreign volunteers were sent home. Trade routes are very restricted so it is unclear what markets may be available to sell what the girls produce. The future is very uncertain.

However, Philip Holmes is known for not giving up. Because of present constraints, training will probably be taken out to the girls. The project will continue to focus on the most vulnerable, including girls in marginalised communities, such as the untouchable Pahari community around Kathmandu, and Dhalit women in the Dhanusha area. In an effort to change attitudes generally, ChoraChori has also opened a boys’ hostel.

Funding efforts in the UK include SI Bromsgrove and Redditch’s Dignity Pad Initiative, which makes reusable sanitary pads. Sigbi has also produced marketing materials and gives talks and presentations. Joanna Lumley is a Sigbi ambassador and wants to be linked to the project.

Different clubs have held sales, quizzes, raffles, as well as holding the Big Curry, and a book will be published of Big Stories.

Vote of thanks were given by Pam Robertson.