A story of the healing path...

Six months ago the NHk team found a family who was living in a public hut with five children. This was the time we were doing a community survey to find girls who may require our services. One of the organizations called Shakti Samuha works with the girls from trafficking background introduced this family. Basanta and Shiva visited the family on that first day with the social worker from Shakti Samuha. We were shocked to see the situation they were living in. We talked to the parents who said they have been staying there for one year and they moved very often because they cannot keep the public place for long. The hut had no door and it is on an open field, no beds to sleep on so they sleep on the ground with very thin blankets. Father and mother would go begging because if they go for the work they get very little money and it is hard to feed their children, they also have alcohol problems. We talked to the parents about the situation and they were not thinking about moving to a good place because they never had experienced living in a proper room. On the same day we decided to bring the two girls (four and five years old) to our school program and we decided to work with the family because there was a lot to do. We asked for help from other organizations to coordinate, but they gave up after some months because they wanted to see the changes immediately. We realized that they did not respect the situation of this family, just wanted to see they change and than NHk team worked with parents .We started to find the room for them because safety was the main concern. It took us six month to get the room, finally a week ago we found a room for them and we able to convince the parents and they moved. There is a lot to do with this family but we think at least children are safe now, what interesting thing happened in the next day of the move one of the girl from this family came to the office and she talked with basanta “sir, yesterday we locked the door and slept inside the room, we felt warm and our dog also stayed inside the room with us”. It is so nice that she came and shared that, these words were telling that how unsafe they were feeling on the previous place. Now the NHk team focusing on reducing the drinking and begging habit of the family and slowly we wanted to sift them in small business, we are hopeful that we will be able to do that one day.

In this change process not only one particular staff worked but all the NHK team provided their time and ideas also the board and some parents of our girls from the school. We thank them all for their support.

Shiva