Summary

We raise essential funds for our "Empowering girls in Nepal" program. This involves mainly support to our implementing partner and social enterprise "Lily's Leaves" in Kathmandu that provides training and employment to marginalized and disabled young women.

current sitation

We are supporting Nepalese girls and young women from two very different backgrounds:

• 1. Women and girls from Province 2 live in a very patriarchal rural society. They have few options in life and child marriage, gender-based violence and trafficking are rife. They lack citizenship and often don't speak Nepali. These factors combined with a lack of basic education mean that they struggle to access training and services.
• 2.   Young deaf women are stigmatized because of their disability.

Our process

We support the social enterprise "Lily's Leaves". This provides residential training alongside a production center in Kathmandu that serves both groups. The women from south Nepal attend six-month-long basic tailoring courses with the option of either returning home at the end with a gifted sewing machine or remaining for six months of advanced tailoring. The deaf women learn silver jewelry manufacture. Ultimately Lily's Leaves will support women's livelihoods derived from forest products.

Campaign aims

We will fund the underlying operation costs of the training and production center along with the associated women’s hostel. After Lily’s Leaves has been operating for three years, it will be able to fund these costs through the sale of products. We will able to offer contracts to the Lily’s Leaves production center, For instance, the able-bodies workers can make schoolbags for distribution to children at the poorest schools. The deaf women will make “treecelets” (tree+bracelet), the sale of which will support our reforestation projects. We will reserve 100% of the funds to meet project support costs.