Border Guards
In
order to inform potential victims about the hazards, MAITI trains young women
as border guards. These women often have been trafficked and taken to Indian
brothels before and have survived - or they could still be stopped at the border with India.At the border crossings into India, the border guards contact the girls who catch their eye directly and whom they consider of being
abducted following false promises. Due to their own experience, these women
developed an eye for a girl´s situation and appear extremely credible during
the chat as they truly know what they are talking about. The girls contacted in
this manner are informed about the danger of being sold into a brothel and that
a sex trafficker is behind most of the promises of marriage or work. As a first
measure of support, the border guards offer immediate refuge in a shelter house.
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Shelter house
pro filia finances the Pashupatinagar shelter
house at the Indian border crossing into Darjeeling. It is offering immediate support to girls in
danger.Often they are still stopped directly at the border by border guards before they try to cross the border. But
also girls freed from Indian brothels and returning home, are given support
here – as well as girls and women from the neighborhood escaping from domestic
violence.
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Information campaigns
Since most of the girls concerned can neither
read nor write, pro filia finances information material based on picture
stories, i.e., in the shape of comics.
It is developed on
the basis of many years of experience by MAITI staff in consultation with the
affected girls and distributed during information campaigns to daughters in
danger, as well as to their parents. This serves to make as many people as
possible aware that there is great danger involved with tempting promises of
work or marriage and that the girls almost always are sold into Indian brothels
instead.
MAITI distributes this material during information campaigns which it organizes
in towns and villages.
The Itahari rehabilitation home
If they wish, girls saved are sent to the Itahari
rehabilitation home. Here, they receive medical and psychological aid, can
learn reading and writing and participate in job training courses.
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The home for single mothers and their babies
During our project visit in November 2018 we met a 15-year-old girl in the transit home who was pregnant after a rape and didn't know what to do. Traumatised, often left alone by the family, without an education or job, there is a high risk that mother and child will end up in prostitution or on the street. That is why pro filia has opened a home for single mothers and their newborn children on the MAITI area in Kathmandu. Here the young women can stay for about a year, complete an education and receive support in finding a job. The first mothers were admitted in May 2019.
The IT project
pro filia will not
only finance training in traditional female professions but also provide
job
opportunities which are more diverse, promise higher income and lead to a
better self-consciousness of the young women. For this reason, we
decided in 2013 to establish
an IT project – nearly a revolution in Nepal where this is considered
primarily
men´s work. Meanwhile, we transferred the funds for the training of 40
girls each year and are about to implement 8
typing offices which
are taken over by the young women trained on the PC – very useful in a
country
with many analphabets.
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Further trainings and start-ups
pro filia now also offers training as a cook, tailor, mushroom farmer, beekeeper and driver.The start-up funding for 10 tailoring shops has also been paid per filia.
Freeing trafficked girls from brothels
Only a few girls sold into Indian brothels
survive. Most die early from infectious disease such as Aids or Hepatitis or
become victims of fatal violence.
MAITI has developed a network in India in order to
free girls sold into sexual slavery and to bring them to a shelter in Nepal - for example to the transit home at Pashupatinagar, pro filia is funding.
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Support for surviving girls in legal action against perpetrators of sex trafficking
Both MAITI and pro filia help girls who make their way free of brothels to find those who have enslaved them. And we contribute to expenses incurred when these survivors testify in court against the sex traffickers who enslaved them.
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Life skills training for vulnerable girls
Girls who work in bars and restaurants are especially in danger to become victims of sex traffickers. pro filia sponsors training sessions held by MAITI, during which the girls learn to protect themselves and to make their own life choices as much as possible.
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