As 2017 gets underway, the NGN Community Anti-trafficking (CAT) project team continues to travel to remote, earthquake-affected villages in the district of Sindhupalchowk to inform local communities about the dangers of children being trafficked into illegal institutions. The team does this through performing educational street dramas, giving talks in schools and many other activities that engage and empower local communities.
In January alone, 1,792 local communities were reached through our street dramas and learned how traffickers operate. By using informative and engaging narrative, our team appeals to a wide range of audiences and is able to educate them about the dangers of children being displaced from their families and communities.
Hundreds of young people in vulnerable communities are also being reached through our school programs. These short, informative and interactive talks work by engaging students through discussions and group interaction while assessing their awareness about the dangers of trafficking in their communities.
Along with street dramas and school talks, our CAT check-post monitors inspect hundreds of vehicles every day to stop traffickers preying on children from these rural communities. In addition to these community-engagement activities, NGN has educated thousands of locals in Sindhupalchowk through our community radio programs, which have been successful in reaching very remote villages where our teams are not able to travel due to landslides and roads being destroyed.
Through such community based initiatives, NGN has been able to prevent many at-risk and vulnerable children from being taken into abusive orphanages far away from their families. Our team continues to monitor and educate local communities to make sure that all children are safe, with their families, and free from all of the horrors that child trafficking brings.
