PTN-volunteer Toos visits our projects in Nepal

THERE IS HOPE!
Our volunteer Toos Verdegem from Zeeland visited our projects in Nepal in april 2010. Here is her letter to the editor: “Back from Kathmandu, what strikes me is that I can cross a street without squeezing me through the traffic. With my left hand restraining an accelerating car, with my right hand a moped or a riksja, with loud honking of everything that has a horn.
A cacaphony in all keys. A soot emission of gasses. Katmandu, a moving city, a city wtihout silence. This in strong contrast with the areas we will see in the Katmandu valley. Places where People’s Trust from the moment of its foundation built schools, orphanages and refuges. No random locations.
From one of my first meetings with the founder of People’s Trust, Dirk van de Wijngaard, the importance he gave to the surroundings, has always stuck in my memory. He said literally:”when the girls wake up, they have to see the air and the green mountains …” This as a contrast with the surroundings they have left: the stinking cages in the borthels of India. I was there about five years ago on the moment fourteen girls were rescued from the borthels of Mumbai. I found them on beds in the teporary refuge of Rescue Foundation.They looked like schoolgirls because of the blue uniforms of the rescue organisation. Confusing, because I knew what was behind the appearance of all these girls. During the next days I heard the stories and saw how some girls kept silent… I tried to get in contact with a girl that competely kept silent. I couldn’t get closer than holding a face with two eyes in it and a blank look.

What a contrast with what I saw in Nepal. We visited a place Sitagaila in the South-West of the Valley. There has started lately a training for hairdresser/facial care for girls who have left behind the traject of rescue and refuge in India, healed, and now get the chance to build up a future in their own country. We saw the girls in a practical lesson.
If you didn’t knew their background, you could place their faces in a R.O.C. in the Netherlands, although the space and resources were very primitive. Also the direct surroundings made clear that it is about girls connected to a boarding school. Bunk beds and a simple kitchen. But what struck was: there is worked towards the future here.

I was very lucky to hand a symbolical cheque from the Ostrea Lyceum from Goes to Indra, the head of the orphanage in Sitapaila – where next to orphan children more rescued girls from borthels live. The poster of the cheque was received by Gita, the girl that wanted to tell her story to us. Like that it was clear that it didn’t concern a girl from a dresser training from the R.O.C. in Holland. Apart from the cloths, in appearance there is no difference…, but in reality it is heartbreaking. Right now 18 girls are waiting in the STOP Family Home in Delhi for their return to Nepal. In this Family Home they are cared for and supported till the trial is over and the criminals are condemned.
People’s Trust guarantee the costs for the refuge and escort to Nepal.

Your Financial support is needed very much.
Toos Verdegem
Volunteer
People’s Trust Netherlands from Zeeland