We’ve conducted numerous trafficking awareness campaigns, training thousands of vulnerable Nepali girls to recognize and reject traffickers’ false promises and deceptive offers. In Uganda and the Philippines, we undertake similar initiatives by educating at-risk girls while empowering their mothers through craft and skill development workshops. In India and Myanmar, we focus on prevention by rescuing orphans from child labor situations, ensuring their safety from traffickers. In Colombia, we provide teen abuse survivors and at-risk girls with skill training, mentoring, and education to prevent them from falling into trafficking. In Argentina, we address the root causes by offering early childhood education and developing trafficking awareness programs for at-risk communities.
Throughout our work supporting children and women, we sometimes encounter cases where girls and women are trapped in human trafficking situations. In these sensitive and urgent circumstances, we collaborate with local authorities to ensure their safe rescue while next steps are determined.
Whenever feasible, we welcome rescued girls and young women into our programs. There, they receive comprehensive care, which can include secure shelter, education, medical attention, counseling, nutrition and opportunities for healing and growth. This support takes place in nurturing environments such as our orphan homes and our rehabilitation home in Nepal, where they can begin to rebuild their lives in a safe and compassionate setting.
We work to equip girls enrolled at the ‘She Has Hope’ rehabilitation homes with everything they need to stand on their own, healed and full of hope. Our Nepali rehabilitation home is a great success— 229 girls have graduated, and of these, 91 women have started their own 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 enslaved have come up through our primary and secondary education programs. Nineteen of our graduates are now enrolled in college thanks to scholarships provided by our donors, and fifteen have graduated from college programs!
In all of our project locations, our goal is sustainability. In Nepal, our apprenticeship program “New Hope Fashions” provides survivors with the opportunity to learn small business concepts while also producing crafts for export which creates a sustainable component for the program.
In Uganda, the women enrolled in our program learn tailoring skills, participate in maintaining a garden project and develop entrepreneurial skills via a catering company. The business further empowers them with fair wages as well as generating funding for the program. Our 15-acre Uganda farmland provides bountiful produce for our students’ meals.
In the Philippines, our trafficking response program is funded in part by a farmland project which includes banana and coconut groves, vegetable gardens, a hen house and a fishery. In India, we have a gardening project and a six-acre lentil farm project serving our programs there. In Myanmar, we have a one-acre, on-campus farmland for fresh produce and a twelve-acre rice farm, both providing key staples in our program beneficiaries' meals.
In Colombia, our program is creating sustainability by partnering with Sapana Dreams to empower our girls with income generating opportunities. In Argentina, our Director is multiplying your generosity by operating a university education satellite franchise which doubles as a program opportunity for the benefit of the community.