2/7/19
NGN has recently expanded its Street Drama Advocacy program into the Humla and Mugu Districts of Nepal where there is little communication with the outside world. Posed as well dressed, well-spoken individuals, traffickers travel to these vulnerable, remote areas where they make promises to take a family’s child to the city and provide them with a dream of care and education.
These areas have traditionally been fertile ground for child traffickers. Our job is in educating the communities and warning them of who and what the traffickers do. We do this through creative means such as putting on a play about the dangers their children face. It works! The audiences are captivated and understand fully the message. We also meet with local groups of mothers and other leaders of the community to help spread the word about how to end this problem. The wonderful thing about NGN is that all our staff are Nepali bringing these messages to other Nepalis.
Our actors travel to remote villages only connected by foot paths to present NGN’s street dramas on “The Dangers of Child Trafficking”. Prevention is the first step that we take in protecting vulnerable children and families from the horrors of child abuse. The program becomes an event and every woman, man and child from the villages attend, and even after it has ended, they talk amongst themselves for hours about something they had no idea existed.
Advocacy and education reduces, and ultimately, stops the trafficking of children. Our street dramas focus on the signs and dangers of trafficking so that locals can be aware of the signs to look for and the people to avoid. Our meetings with local groups further this awareness by allowing more specific conversations about the issues facing individual communities.
Through this type of outreach, we can keep more children from ever facing the horrors of trafficking in the first place. Street dramas have been shown to be highly effective at accomplishing this, as often, the majority of a village will turn out to watch.
NGN’s Prevention Project: Stopping trafficking before it starts!
