Nepal: Providing opportunities
and hope for massage workers in Nepal
"When I first started working at
Change Nepal, we surveyed girls working
in massage parlors. Almost all of them
had cell phones—many given by their
clients so the girls could be reached—but
we found that a full 90% of the girls
could not dial out because they could
not read the numbers. They were illiterate," relates
Rajendra Ramtel, a field officer at Change
Nepal.
Founded in 2004, Change Nepal is working
to improve the status of the vulnerable,
in particular girls and women working
in the worst forms of child labor. Change
Nepal works to be a catalyst for change
for women working in massage parlors
and cabin restaurants by helping those
women gain an education, vocational skills
and health information.
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Rajendra
Ramtel and Pramesh Pradhan
at the Change Nepal office
in Thamel, Kathmandu. With
World Education support, Change
Nepal is now helping
young women gain an education.
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Girls coming into Kathmandu from other
parts of Nepal often congregate at bus
parks, finding nowhere else to go. It
is here that they are often picked up
and persuaded to work in a massage parlor
or cabin restaurant. Change Nepal uses
outreach workers to visit the Kathmandu
bus parks and intervene with these girls
before they can be shepherded into sex
work.
Once a vulnerable girl has been identified,
Change provides shelter for girls where
they can also get information about the
risks of working in a massage parlor
or a cabin restaurant and what befalls
most of the girls who choose this track.
Girls can stay in the shelter up to three
months and while there, can also attend
nonformal education classes that focus
on literacy and health issues. During
that time Change Nepal encourages the
girls to return to their home and reintegrate
into their family after providing them
different employment based and life skills
training.
"We are successful because we help
girls withdraw from danger," says
Pramesh Pradhan, program coordinator
of Change Nepal. "We help girls
with vocational training so they can
learn some skills and find a profession
other than sex work. We don't force the
girls in any direction—they can
chose the type of work that most interests
them from a range of professional trainings.
They get to decide what they want to
do." Some of the vocational options
Change offers include soap and candle
and soft doll making, sewing and tailoring,
driving, baking noodles and snack making
and growing a kitchen garden.
World Education, using funding from United
States Department of Labor (USDOL), Office
of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human
Trafficking, for the Brighter Futures
Program, has worked with Change Nepal
for almost two years. World Education
provides funds for the Change program
as well as technical assistance in setting
up the vocational training initiative,
using World Education's Self-Employment
and Economic Education Program (SEEP)
model, which was developed to assist
youth working in the worst forms of child
labor to learn a vocational skill as
well as business and accounting skills
so graduates can run a business. Change
Nepal currently has 451 girls enrolled
in nonformal education classes. The classes
are designed to fit around the girls'
schedules and meet for two hours a day,
six days a week, for nine months.
"World Education is a great partner," comments
Pramesh. "They give us assistance
and are knowledgeable and professional.
World Education staff really challenge
us to work and think through innovative
approaches that will be effective with
this group of young women."
There is also a significant health component
to Change Nepal's initiative. "We
provide a community medical assistant—a
nurse—who talks to all the girls
about basic reproductive health—including
pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
and HIV and AIDS. The medical assistant provides
information and referrals, should the
girls need one, and also lends an ear
to listen to the girls and answer any
health-related questions they may have," Pramesh
continues. "We have found that a
welfare-based approach—talking
with employers about the health of the
girls—works better than a right's
based approach."
Based in Thamel, the tourist hub of Kathmandu,
where there are an estimated 200 massage
parlors catering to travelers and locals,
and more vulnerable girls entering the
city every day, Change Nepal has many
challenges ahead. But as more young women
gain literacy skills and hear the messages
Change promotes, more and more they are
talking with each other, telling their
friends and colleagues about the nonformal
education classes and repeating the health
information they have learned. In this
way, slowly, Change Nepal is making in-roads
into this challenging profession.
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