Just over three years ago we had a tremendous volunteer in Nepal called Emma Triplett. Emma had seen an interview with me in The Kathmandu Post and immediately volunteered her services to help with trafficking victims that we had retrieved from the Indian circuses. In a life changing experience she went to work at our "Kathmandu Training Centre" teaching English to girls in between their learning cutting and stitching skills. After a few months she went back to UK and decided to set up "Hatti Trading" (http://www.hattitrading.co.uk/), providing an outlet for bags and designer items that were being made by the girls she left behind in Kathmandu. Emma is a great leader and the business took off, with her selling her merchandise through party agents. The initiative is now providing work to 18 former circus girls in Kathmandu; this is what the trafficking survivors most need - jobs.
Yesterday I addressed her 25 agents and told them how they were actually in the frontline with us in the fight against human trafficking. Unless there is something for the girls to return to our circus rescue programme can fail very badly and out of sheer desperation girls may return to the circus. The talk went very well, even though my PowerPoint presentation wouldn't open and I had to present for one hour unscripted and without imagery.
There is currently an epidemic of "winter vomiting virus" sweeping the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=TT1A1IOQXOAMTQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2008/01/04/nnoro604.xml
This morning at 8 a.m. I joined the victims. Explosively so.
