The Way to Mahendranagar

After rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked and displaced children, ChoraChori’s main aim is to reunite them with their families. Field staff member Yogesh Dhami is currently on a reunification mission in west Nepal.

Boy on a Bike

In December we posted about Sudip. We took him into our care after the Nepal police found him cycling around Godawari on a rickety bike asking for directions to Mahendranagar. He’d been in domestic service - enslaved - with his cousin but had escaped. Sudip was desperate to return to his grandmother. The trouble was that Mahendranagar was almost 350 miles away. This involves a 15 hour car journey (much longer by bus). It’s taken us a little while to trace his grandmother and our small team has had major commitments over the past couple of months. But today he’s finally on his way home with Yogesh and two other children. One of these is a child whom we brought back from India in the mass rescue in March.

Reunification of displaced children is very time consuming. This is not only in terms of finding families and researching their circumstances. We of course have to ensure the safety and welfare of the reunited children. But also we have to rely on public transport. Yogesh is travelling by bus, stopping off en route in Nepalgunj to reunite another child with his sister and brother in law. He can expect to be away for five very uncomfortable days. But this is what we do and epitomises our values in going to great lengths - and distances - for even just one child (or in this case, three).

Increased capacity

The return of these three children brings the number staying at our transit refuge down to 24. A few days ago I’d have written that even with this drop in numbers we still didn’t have room to take on another major rescue for the foreseeable future. However, today I am delighted to report that we have acquired a former old people’s home that lies just down the way from our refuge and trauma management centre. This provides us with potentially a further 50 bed spaces. We still have the challenge of funding the cost of another rescue and subsequent care. With our sights firmly set on rescuing girls from the sex trade in India,we can only hope that a major longterm donor gets behind us.

Meantime, we are relying on our regular loyal supporters to keep our whole operation afloat. Please help us out using the button below!