Film of our art workshop in Kathmandu

Yesterday I went to visit our art workshop for child trafficking victims here in Kathmandu. I was delighted with the progress as I watched our UK volunteer ceramicist, Alex Hunter, teach the girls press moulding and pot throwing. In a classroom next door other girls were learning mosaic techniques.

When the course is over at the end of February I expect about half of the students to become employees at my new not-for-profit company "Himalayan Mosaics". The remaining girls will commence an advanced workshop. Ultimately all should enter good employment through jobs that we create and never again be vulnerable to poverty and the criminal intent of others.

There's a challenge!

Trafficked girls rescued from India

Our partner organisation in India, ChildLine, intercepted some child traffickers in Gorakhpur, North India on Thursday. The picture isn't entirely clear just yet but it seems that their victims were rescued as they were ostensibly on their way to jobs in Delhi, complete with appropriate documentation to commence work. However, instead of boarding a train to Delhi they were going to be put on one going to Mumbai (Bombay), a switch that illiterate girls wouldn't have realised until it was too late. In Mumbai they would have been sold to brothels or sent on to the sex trade in a Gulf state. When ChildLine contacted us for help, we immediately agreed to accept them upon repatriation and take them into our care.

Seven girls are now back in Nepal, waiting at the border before being transferred to our Kathmandu facilities. Of the seven, three are minors. Within the other four, one or possibly two are the agents involved in the crime and the police need to question the group further to establish the truth. Once identified the agent(s) will be brought to justice and face long prison sentences.

This good news coincides with the launch of our online Christmas appeal (see the link on the right). In the first six months of next year, alongside ChildLine, we want to retrieve approximately 150 children and teenage girls from around six Indian circuses. This follows our successful rescue of 280 children in the last four years from other circuses. This time the team will be tackling the most exploitative of the circuses and some very dangerous men, bringing these child abusers to justice through a dedicated lawyer. We need to raise £15,846 to undertake this mission, this covering rescue operations, repatriation and legal action.

Please give as generously as you can.

Birthday mosaics

The Kathmandu mosaic studio re-opened yesterday. Two other girls haven't returned after the Dashain break. One, Bipana, who had been struggling somewhat, has stayed behind with her family. Another, Bishnu, has got engaged. I doubt if either of them will come back to us.

It is quite a challenge to keep the studio girls' interest going, especially if one is working to favourite designs that can become repetitive (sadly a business requirement). So I work hard to give them some variety. Yesterday we held a special children's lunchtime birthday party for the daughter of one of my expatriate friends in Kathmandu. Six children spent about four hours with us making their own individual mosaic pieces to keep. As children's hands tend to be a bit too small to hold the cutters and too weak to cut the tiles the studio girls ended up doing most of the work. Although this is fun it is also a source of income to the organisation. There's no such thing as a free lunch....

Dashain difficulties

Each October we reunite children who are in our refuge care in Kathmandu with their families for the main Hindu festival of Dashain. We see this as being the bare minimum that we can do to maintain the family contacts that are so important in Nepalese society. It´s always a nerve wracking time for us though, for in doing so we expose the children and teenagers to family agendas that may not necessarily be in their best interests. Village families have little comprehension of the progress that their youngsters are making with us and they can spoil that success by pushing children in other disastrous directions. Last year we only just managed to stop a father sending his very talented son back to the exploitation of the circus, no doubt for a few dollars in return. Under our care that boy is now not only doing really well at school but also has become one of the top gymnasts in the country. I wouldn´t be surprised to see him in a future Nepal Olympic team.

This year we had a mini crisis over Priya. She was one of the two girls that I started training in mosaic art this time last year - an initiative that has now been extended to 16 others in my Kathmandu studio. She quickly became a top artist, having the perfect combination of skill and speed at her work. But her vulnerability is a case in point. She had returned from the circus to find both of her parents had committed suicide. Her aunt duly packed her off to another kind of slave labour inside a Kathmandu carpet factory and we rescued her from there in July last year. Last month she, like many other kids, wanted to go "home" for Dashain and of course we couldn´t stop her as she´s a free person. Then we received the news that she´d got married (she´s barely sixteen) to a boy that she knew from the carpet factory. That seemed to be the end of her short career and this otherwise totally uneducated girl appeared to be rejoining the cycle of poverty from which she had so briefly emerged. However it seems that all is not lost as we have since heard that she is very happy to be married and will set up home in Kathmandu. She also wants to continue with her mosaic work and I am very glad to agree to that wish. Hopefully having a good income - no doubt better than her husband´s - will help with the stability of the marriage. In the harsh reality of daily life in Nepal a wife who has economic value will be valued all the more.

This is the last day of my holiday in Spain. It has provided a break from the chaos of living in Nepal and allowed me to find some time to relax. I have also found the creative space to plan the future of my new company "Himalayan Mosaics" and develop some fresh directions for the Trust. It´s really been just what the doctor ordered - or more correctly what my wife Bev ordered. I am now ready for the fray once again.

Irish mosaics

A few months back the Youth Club at St McArtin's Cathedral in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland undertook a sponsored stay awake to raise funds for our work with trafficked children. My brother Willie, who is a congregation member, is my link there and in response to an excellent £1,120 raised on the night I offered to have my girls make a mosaic of gratitude. I chose as the subject the Celtic statues on White Island on Lough Erne and former circus girl Manju really brought those old statues to life. Now the mosaic will go on display in the Parish Hall at the Cathedral and bear testimony to the gratitude of young people on the other side of the world. Well worth staying up for.