Kathmandu was a cacophony of sights and sounds and culture!
The Himalayan Travel Mart in Kathmandu was opened by the Prime Minister of Nepal and the Minister of Tourism. The event, attended by 300+ travel professionals featured a variety of speakers on many topics, from the lure of climbing Mt. Everest, to new trends in travel and tourism, even the use of social media and blogging as part of marketing and building a brand.
AAI President, Nancy Rivard presented on trafficking awareness in the aviation industry – an integral part of social responsibility and sustainability which was a new topic for the Travel Mart but very well received. It was interesting for the group to learn that Nepal – India is one of the busiest trafficking routes in the world. All presentations can be viewed at this LINK
Dr. Kate Jewell, AAI’s Nepal Director, helped arrange for Nancy’s participation and they met with Vicky and Bridgett Sauerhage and Beverly Fender who were returning AAI’s adopted project in Nepal the Eco Home for Orphans, in Kathmandu. Bridgette agreed to support the human trafficking cause by selling bracelets made by trafficking survivors. (see picture at left with bracelet vendor.)
Kate and Nancy met with two anti trafficking NGO’s in Nepal.
Shyam Pokharel runs SASANE which was founded by 70 women survivors of human trafficking. He was a former Supreme Court judge and shared about the amazing paralegal program where survivors are hired to work with police…and a comic book to educate in rural villages about trafficking. SASANE Sisterhood of Survivors also has a program to certify trafficking survivors as trekking guides. He helped with this rescue of 28 Nepali children:
CNN Hero Anuradha Koirala, founded Maiti Nepal in 1993 and now has three prevention homes, nine transit homes, two hospices and a high school. More than one thousand children are getting direct services from Maiti Nepal every day. Her achievements include liberating more than 12,000 girls from brothels. She is is also the current governor of Province 3 of Nepal. She met with our team as well as with Kate when she introduced her to AAI (see photo on right). We toured the facility with housing, vocational training and a school for children of victims and wanted to see projects on the border where survivors were hired to look for potential trafficking victims at the border and work with border police to apprehend them.
Our team had a chance to visit with 8 survivors at the shelter. Most of the girls were from a remote village and lured by the promises of a trafficker to take a network marketing job in Kolkata for 20,000 rupees a month. Little did they know it but they were destined for a brothel. One of the victims had met a “boyfriend” on Facebook and she traveled to the border to meet him. However, when he showed up for her – he was nothing like what she imagined….so she took the offer from Maiti Nepal to provide shelter, job training and a new beginning!
It was wonderful to deliver another donation to Mission Himalaya Eco Home for the maintenance and upkeep of Happy Shepherd’s Cottage! Funding for the volunteer residence was provided by AAI member Romy Skaper in honor of her mother.
Although our team was only there for a day, we had a beautiful reception, we got to tour the grounds and see the agriculture programs, chickens, goats and share in a meal, introductions and dancing…and even walking the kids to the school bus. See pictures below:
