Empower Nepali Girls

I know it's been a few days since I've written, and I keep getting halfway through blogs and then getting so tired that I fall asleep.  I have tons of reading and meetings and stuff today (they keep us busy here) but I PROMISE, well not promise, but 98% promise an entry about ship life and Dominica by tomorrow night!

There is one quick thing I want to write about because I can't help it. This morning in my global studies class we had a speaker, Jeffrey Kottler, who is a professor on the ship, has written many "self-help" books and is also the founder of the non-profit Empower Nepali Girls.  Now the first thing I want to say is that this guy has renewed my faith in humanity just a bit - this guy is the author of seriously, like, 50 books with titles like "Help yourself Help Others," "Finding Yourself While Helping," etc. (I just made those up, but you get the picture).  He is the living practice of everything he preaches.  He spoke to us for an hour and a half, and he was the most emotional, passionate, real speaker I have ever seen.  To see him change throughout his talk was amazing - he spoke, he smiled, he laughed, he yelled (and i mean YELLED) and yep, he even cried (along with half of the audience).  He was absolutely captivating, and if you ever have the opportunity to see him it is a must.

His organization, "Empower Nepali Girls," sponsors lower caste girls in Nepal and sponsors them for $50-$100 a  year so that they can go to school.  He founded this organization ten years ago.  He had been doing service work and research in different places and was in Nepal in a small village.  As he walked around the village, he kept hearing about girls "disappearing," and afterwards no one would speak of them again.  He did a bit of digging and discovered that these 8-13 year-old girls were being sold in to sex slavery in surrounding countries (like India) by their parents and would be raped as many as 10 or 15 times on their first DAY.  It was unclear whether or not the parents knew the girls were being sold in to sex slavery because no one would speak of it, but when the only other option is starvation and death it can seem like the only choice.

Anyway, one day he was standing by the school and saw one girl named Inu standing off to the side.  He asked the principal why she was there and the principal told him it was because she was the next to disappear. He asked the principal how much it would take to keep her in school and he continuously said "it's too much, it's too much, no one can afford it."  After a lot of pressing, Jeffrey discovered that in order to stay in school Inu would need fall and spring uniforms, school supplies, shoes and food which would cost 2,500 rupies, the equivalent of $50.  He took $50 out of his pocket, handed it to the principal and said "Inu stays in school!"

Shortly after walking away, however, his doctoral student approached him and said "You know what happens now, right?  You have to come back.  If you don't tell the principal you are coming back to check on Inu in a year he will keep the money and she will be gone."  Thus, Empower Nepali Girls was born.  Jeffrey and a team of up to 20 people, primarily women, go to villages across the jungle and the Himalayas every fall award girls scholarships and provide female empowerment mentoring.  In Nepal, these lower caste girls are worth so little that if an elder had to choose between saving their lives or a goat, the goat would be saved every time.  These girls have never even heard of women having professions, and often times in childbirth they are left to die so that their husbands can find stronger wives.  Empowering Nepali Girls aims to change this and to help rebuild the country.

Empower Nepali Girls has no president, no employees, no headquarters.  All volunteers pay for their service out of pocket and over 90% of donations go directly to sponsoring girls.  And how's Inu, you ask?  She is the first girl from her village to go to university, on a full scholarship to the most elite school in Thailand.