She Has Hope is a human trafficking response initiative operating several life-saving programs for vulnerable girls and women in Asia and Africa. 30 years ago, we began our work with one project in India rescuing orphaned slavery survivors to provide them with rehabilitation and education.
Today She Has Hope programs exist to prevent girls from becoming slaves, to rescue slavery victims from traffickers, and to rehabilitate survivors with the goal of restoring them to a life full of hope in India, Nepal, Uganda, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
Many women in our programs are equipped with craft-making and tailoring skills to give them financial stability via jobs and small businesses we help them launch. All net proceeds from the sales of our program participants’ handmade crafts directly support their programs.
Local efforts are also conducted by our Houston staff and volunteers to inform the public of the trafficking crisis in the United States, to direct individuals and businesses to be vigilant in spotting potential trafficking activity to report to the national trafficking hotline (888-373-7888), and to encourage volunteer support for local trafficking response programs.
We are a program of Peace Gospel International, a charitable organization that began its work in 1993 to serve orphans, child labor victims, and young trafficking survivors in Asia and Africa. We have achieved Platinum level status (the highest level) with Candid, the premier source for nonprofit information and transparency— you can review our profile here.
Our response to the human trafficking crisis in Asia and Africa can be summarized in five categories as follows:
Prevention
We have conducted hundreds of trafficking awareness campaigns, teaching thousands of susceptible Nepali girls to avoid the false promises and deceptive offers of traffickers. In Uganda and the Philippines, we conduct similar efforts through the education of at-risk girls, while also providing empowerment for their mothers through craft and skill development workshops. In India and Myanmar, we are focusing on prevention by way of rescuing orphans from child labor situations to ensure their protection from traffickers.
Rescue
Our kiosk at one of the busier Nepal-India border crossings serves as an important lookout for trafficking activity. Our staff has been trained to look for unusual behavior such as men traveling with teenage girls, and to tip off the nearby border police in such circumstances. Our vigilant team has helped rescue several girls straight from the traffickers. This has led to the incarceration of a number of those perpetrating these horrible crimes. Rescued girls are provided shelter and hospitality at our transition home at the border until we can determine the best course of action for the girls. Most are enrolled in our Nepal rehabilitation home. In India and Myanmar, we are working with local authorities to rescue girls as young as age seven from labor slavery.
Rehabilitation
In response to the human trafficking crisis in South Asia, we operate a rehabilitation home and trade school in Kathmandu that is home to several Nepali girls and young ladies rescued from desperate situations. At the home, they receive counseling and medical care, room & board, and literacy classes. At our trade school downstairs from the home they become proficient in several craft-making, tailoring, cooking and gardening skills through daily coursework offered by our full-time teachers. Our goal is to equip the girls with all of the skills they need to enter the workforce as empowered citizens, fully realizing their potential, restoring them to a life full of hope. In India, we operated a girls home for trafficking survivors from 1997-2022. Due to Indian government regulations the program has now transitioned into a foster care support system. The program provides security, rehabilitation, nutrition, and an accredited education to orphan girls recovering from slavery or child labor situations.
Restoration
We work to equip girls enrolled at the ‘She Has Hope’ rehabilitation homes and trade schools with everything they need to stand on their own, healed and full of hope. Our Nepali rehabilitation home and trade school is a great success — 203 girls have graduated, and of these, 88 women have started their own businesses, while 80 graduates have been successfully employed by local businesses thanks to skills mastered at our trade school. Our other Nepal graduates have married and are supporting their new families with skills acquired at the home. In Uganda, trafficking survivors are finding restoration in serving at our orphan home and local school while they continue their training at our small-scale on-campus trade school. Through our India program, girls who were once slaves have come up through our primary and secondary education programs. Thirteen of our graduates are now enrolled in college thanks to scholarships provided by our donors, and 13 have graduated from college programs! In 2023, we opened our India trade school on our main campus. The trade school offers certified skill coursework in trades such as tailoring, to young women who are either recovering from human trafficking or else are at high risk of being trafficked.
Sustainability
In all of our project locations, our goal is sustainability. In Nepal, the garden project at our rehabilitation home not only provides the girls with nutritious ingredients for their meals but also equips them with knowledge of advanced gardening techniques. They leave the home knowing how to start their own gardens to provide for themselves. Since the garden's inception, the project has harvested close to 500 lbs of eggplant, green beans, corn, radishes, potatoes, spinach, green onions, and garlic.
In Uganda, the women enrolled in our program not only craft the beautiful products you see here in the shop, but also participate in maintaining a garden project and a catering company which further empowers them with fair wages as well as generating funding for the program. In the Philippines, our trafficking response program is funded in part by a farmland project which includes banana and coconut groves, vegetable gardens, a henhouse and a fishery. In India, we have an extensive rooftop box gardening project and a 6-acre lentil farm project serving our programs there. In Myanmar, we have a 1-acre, on-campus farmland for fresh produce and a 12-acre rice farm, both providing key staples in our program beneficiaries' meals.
