EmpowerHER: Rights, Protection and Hope

As our safe house is the only service like this for underage girls in the Province, we tend to be very busy. The girls are receiving counselling, education, legal support when needed, training, extra curricular classes and most importantly, a lot of care and affection. Many of our girls are highly traumatised and frequently require one to one support most of the time.

In the past 12 months we assisted 256 girls through our Safe House and in community, and

really focused on community training and we are seeing great results. We trained 1704 community members in the Dhanusha and Mahottari districts (mainly at schools but also local authorities and community groups) on issues surrounding child marriage, domestic violence, menstruation hygiene, children’s rights and importance of education.

Our Outreach Staff work across all 8 districts of Province 2 and ensure that the children are helped either in the community when possible, or referred to one of our centres – Birgunj, Parwanipur or Janakpur. 

Our EmpowerHER Ventures project is going well as well - 67 women are already finishing their basic tailoring training and half of them already started the specialist training on making uniforms and sportswear. 2 workshops have already been set up with one more and the Birgunj showroom to be set up later this year or early next year. 

Our staff at the Safe House are ensuring that all the girls receive a lot of attention and are designing more and more fun, interactive activities for them. We had a ‘Dashain Camp’ – a week filled with a lot of fun classes, dance, art, crafts. That really was a lot of fun. A few of our girls have joined karate classes now and they couldn’t be happier. This really helps with their confidence and overall development.

We’re so grateful for your continued support — it makes all the difference and keeps this important work going!

Our new project, EmpowerHER Ventures, has been launched! We will provide training and employment to 100 women, mainly from the Dalit communities. Most of the girls/women are from our existing programmes but we welcome any women from the local communities that would like to get training and earn sustainable income. Main venture will be specialised tailoring with 3 workshops and one showroom set up across Madhesh Pradesh. 

First 30 young women started their basic training in Janakpur a couple of months ago – cutting, measuring, basic sewing. 40 women are just starting their training in Rautahat. After that part of the training is completed, they will receive specialised training and we have found an amazing trainer to take them to the next level. So far the women are so happy with everything. One of the assistant trainers is our past trainee so she is so enthusiastic and proud to be doing this.

So far we are using manual but good quality sewing machines and once the women are 100% comfortable with those, we will start getting electric machines that will speed their work a lot. In Janakpur we found a really nice area with a few shutter shops that the women will be working from, we have just finished initial renovations/decorations. We even had to build a toilet. In Rautahat we were able to get a large community hall for the training and we will rent a space for the workshop once they are ready to work. 

We are so excited about this initiative and the huge potential is has to bring solid income to the families. We will keep you posted as the project progresses!

And as always – thank you sooooo much for all the support!!!