Olga's Girls: Indentured Servitude in Nepal

Learn more: http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/asia/nepal-olgas-girls

For over twenty years, Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif., has dedicated her life to helping the children of Nepal, providing them with educations, meals, and health care they would otherwise never be able to get. She formed her nonprofit, the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, to do just that with the help of caring donors.

Her love for these children has made this 83-year-old grandmother fight one of the saddest measures of poverty in western Nepal, the selling of young girls to be domestic slaves, or Kamlaris, by parents too poor to feed their children. Some of these girls are as young as 6-years-old, and many are sold year after year until they reach adulthood when they marry and start their own families.

For many of these Kamlaris, the lives they lead in their employers homes are filled with abuse, both physical and mental. Worse, some of the girls are raped by employers who feel emboldened by the girls' inability to communicate with their families because they are so far away.

Murray found that the way to end this Kamlari system was to help the families out financially, treating the cause of the problem directly. Her innovative approach was to provide the family with a piglet or goat, which they could raise and sell or slaughter for food. She also tells the parents that she will provide school for the girls. She pours her efforts into stopping the transactions during the Maghe Sankranti festival when the girls return home and parents make new deals or renew contracts.

Since her projects inception, Murray and her charity have saved over 4000 girls from slavery, many of whom have gone on to receive educations and become successful businesswomen after being trained in vocational programs. Many more have become advocates and volunteers to end the practice that once enslaved them.

This project is part of Pulitzer Center-sponsored project "Nepal: Olga's girls" (http://bit.ly/vujiZE).

Video: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle

Reporter: Meredith May / San Francisco Chronicle

Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Pulitzer Center
• Nepal
• Child Labor
• Slavery
• Kamlari
• Olga Murray
• Maghe Sankranti
• Girl Slave
• Poverty
• Sexual Abuse
• Rape
• Children Women Crisis

[lancieannie]

Olga Murray, you are an angel.

[ReliableInsider]

People wonder why we fight poverty and why it makes sense to provide family planning and welfare and jobs even to poor people who are able-bodied and who don't have any children.

This is why.

Children are innocent.

[luitelram]

Olga Murray matajee kee Jay. Wanderful job

[mb002009]

Olga Murray is an amazing person.

Her Foundation does much needed work in extremely poor Nepal. Please refrain from nasty comments about the people who sell they kids and people who buy them. Their life is extremely difficult, nothing like ours and we should not judge. The situation for most girls and women in Nepal is living hell.

[Angellasttrue]

Estas palabras aparecieron escritas con sangre en una de las paredes de la habitacion de la joven Daphne Wanninkhof al ser hallada asesinada en su casa mientras se encontraba sola el 1º de febrero del 89, con la cabeza rapada, sin la pierna derecha y sin 3 uñas que le fueron arrancadas . Nunca se pudo encontrar al culpable. Copia y pega este mensaje en este y tres videos mas, o el fantasma de Daphne te asesinara esta noche. Lo siento pero lo mismo me hicieron

[Popeyes00]

man I wanna go just beat the shit out of those "slave-owners" and give them like 30~40dollars and take the girl back.....and for those female owners.....i wanna ask them "why dont u let me rape u and make u work all day just for a few days and see how this poor girl feels....bitch"

it is very surprising how there r loads of cases like this in this world, in 21st century....

[sukebegaijin1]

1 vote from Japan to Olga murray.