Providing rescue from Nepal’s sex trade, the Peace Rehabilitation Center in Kathmandu is an oasis of hope for many young women needing refuge. Leading this faith-based organization is Shanta Sapkota, a Nepali woman who has dedicated herself to caring for victims of sex trafficking. Many of the young women and girls that the center cares for were lured into domestic prostitution or international trafficking by false promises of marriage or employment. Most suffer from abuse, illness, abandonment, harsh brothel conditions and/or the effects of STDs and HIV/AIDS. It is under these circumstances that the center seeks to create a better life for these young women. Through care programs and advocacy, the center seeks to prevent sex trafficking and to rehabilitate its victims.

Peace Rehabilitation Center volunteer Carmen Gronewold with director Shanta Sapkota and staff member Min Sapkota.

Carmen Gronewold, a volunteer for the Peace Rehabilitation Center, shared her experience with us:

Q: When and why did you get involved with the Peace Rehabilitation Center?

A: I got involved with them in 1996. I had for years been applying with the World Mission Prayer League to work with dying and destitute people. And that need doesn’t show up on a lot of personal need lists. So it wasn’t an easy placement. Then Shanta at Peace Rehabilitation Center in Nepal had expressed her great need for someone to come and help her at the center. All these girls were coming back most of them were infected with HIV, a number of them died from AIDS, and she just really needed some help. Shanta pulled out my application and said “that’s just the kind of person that I need.”

I was invited on a trial basis by Shanta. At the end of three months both sides wanted to continue, so they started to work on getting me a work visa, but couldn’t. I was there for another three months and then had to leave the country for a while. Then I came back in on another tourist visa. I was in and out for 1996-97. And then I worked there full time in 1998.

Girls doing chores at the Peace Rehabilitation Center in Kathmandu.Q: What were you responsible for as a volunteer?

A: I taught some health, hygiene and cooking skills. I did some administrative things, applied for some grants. But for the most part I was just involved in the life of the center, which is very much run like a family, so you all have your different chores. Everybody cleans in the morning or does laundry or cooks or whatever and I was just kind of expected to be a part of the flow of the day as a family. And so I ended up spending a lot of time with the girls doing whatever they were doing. Washing clothes in the river and carrying water from a half a mile to the house. Living with them, cooking and winnowing rice on the roof. In my American “gotta do something” mind it was like “what am I doing here, I’m not doing anything.”

I realized something interesting at the end of my first six months when we couldn’t get the work visa. The girls and I were sitting on the roof one day and they were teaching me how to winnow rice and we were just jabbering. By that time I knew the language pretty well, but still there were things that I missed. One of the girls said something I couldn’t understand so I asked another of the girls, who spoke some English, “Can you help me understand what she’s trying to say?” The girl replied “She wants to know who will love us when you go?” I realized then that for these girls, who have been so abused and not valued at all, just spending time with them meant the world to them. It wasn’t what I taught them; it was who I was with them.

Q: What was the most challenging aspect of the experience?

A: They had had more pain in their 15 to 20 years of life than I would ever know in my whole lifetime. So how to relate to them was a real concern and a challenge and kind of a fear. Who was I to be there working with them when I hadn’t been through anything like what they had been through? That was really difficult. And just to hear the stories, of what these girls went through it was very challenging, in that I just felt angry, angry, angry a lot of the time. The center is a place that offers hope.

For more information visit http://peacerehab.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Interviews, Volunteers, Organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.