General Welfare Pratisthan, Nepal
GWP serves 350 survivors of sex trafficking and very high risk girls in rural Nepal and
the border areas, offering training, counseling, AIDS prevention and medical care, and
income generation programs including papermaking, animal husbandry, cultivation and
tailoring. Survivors raise community awareness of trafficking through street theater in the hardest hit areas of Nepal, and GWP works together with law enforcement and local people to break down trafficking networks in remote areas.
GWP survivors produce a line of handmade paper journals and notecards. Their handmade paper products are made from a renewable resource – the Daphne plant, a large bush that grows wild throughout Nepal.
Survivors at GWP were interviewed to determine the impact of their involvement in an income generating activity. All respondents were able to cite specific benefits to the individual girls by raising the financial situation of the family, both in terms of their own increased confidence and independence, as well as fathers and brothers behaving more respectfully towards them as legitimate financial contributors to the household.
In addition, girls group members and community members discussed the benefits of
involvement in an income generating activity as directly targeting vulnerability to
trafficking. Survivors regard their involvement in the handicrafts program as a way to
ensure that they will not have to return to their previous work either in the sex trade or
the circus; it is providing them with the ability to make decisions about their future.
One said, “Some of us who had returned from circus work even wanted to go back because it was so hard for us back in the village. But after we started attending the group and had some savings also, we didn’t want to go back anymore. We are now saving money which is good for our future to stop us being trafficked again.”
