Ett tack från Seven Women i Nepal (på engelska)

Thank you StellaStar Team for your generous support and long term commitment to not only the Seven Women Centre, but also our projects in the wider Nepalese villages. We thought that it was important to provide you with some detailed information and background history on why we selected this particular village to support. We are sorry that it has taken so long to get a finalised list of scholarship students to you, however because of the major issue of child trafficking in this area, many of the children on the original list of 50 students are no longer attending the school as the parents have sent them off to work. You will see now that the list of scholarship students stands at 46.

The children in this particular village are in desperate need of support, because many of them come from families where the mother is left alone to raise the children or are from families where the parents suffer from disabilities. Both of these issues make it extremely challenging for parents to be able to afford to send their children to school. Many of the parents’ work in the fields, therefore meaning that they do not receive a regular income, however they do at times receive food from the harvests to feed their families. Without your kind support, the children that you are sponsoring would not have a chance at attending school or receiving an education so we very much thank you for your desire to improve the future of Nepal.

Initially our plan was to provide support to empower the young women of the village to attend school. However, during this selection process and discussions with the local teachers, it became very evident that there was a major child labour and child trafficking issue within this village. Therefore, we have widened the scholarships support to include many boys who have been working as child labourers.

To give you some background on this issue, in the remote areas of Nuwakot Village many young children are sent away by their desperate parents to be used as child labour. Many parents feel as though they cannot appropriately provide for their children, as it is very common for many families to have over 6 – 8 children. This makes providing them with two meals a day seem impossible. Parents think that by sending their children to work as domestic helpers, that they will be provided with two meals a day and shelter. Not to mention money that is always sent back to the family in the village. Often parents cannot see that their child is missing out on attending school and having the freedom of being a child – the parents only see the money and the fact that they now have one less mouth that they need to feed.

Once again, thank you for your generous support and commitment to improving the future educational outcomes of the children of Nepal.