Stop Traffick is one of the newest social justice-oriented student organization on Middlebury’s campus. The work we do here at Middlebury is focused on raising funds and awareness to combat sex trafficking, and our efforts will aim primarily to empower young women in rural Nepal through education and microfinance. Yes, Vermont is geographically far from the peaks of the Himalayas, but we needn’t be separated in action or ideals: we all can and should advocate the commitment to education, the insistence on human rights, the imperative of gender equality, and the inexcusability of violence necessary for all individuals to realize their own power. Stop Traffick harnesses the passion for social change present in many students at Middlebury and work towards a world wherein women and girls are agents of purpose and progress, not pawns for greed and misogyny. This value of this group is the merit of its members, and so we seek individuals who are passionate and committed to the empowerment of girls anywhere as a means to a better world everywhere.
We raise funds to support the project STOP Girl Trafficking (SGT)–the 1998 brainchild of San Francisco based American Himalayan Foundation (AHF) and the Nepal founded Rural Health and Education Service Trust (RHEST). AHF was founded by Richard Blum in an effort to preserve Himalayan culture and advocate for human rights and services particularly through providing augmented access to improved health care and education. RHEST grew out of a Dr. Aruna Uprety’s vision for a Nepal free from the stain of sex trafficking and compromised female health. In 1992, when attending a conference on HIV/AIDS, a destitute young woman implored her: “make girls aware of this crime [of sex trafficking], so they will not be lured by good looking people with their false promises. If we were educated and knew of such things, we would have never come to this hell. Every day we live with pain and suffering.” Dr. Uprety has made good on this promise.
The flourishing program Stop Girl Trafficking (SGT) has put 10,000 Nepalese girls through school and not lost a single one to trafficking. It takes $100 to put one girl through school for one year, and what exactly does this money buy? Directly, it subsidizes the public school tuition, textbooks, uniforms, outside mentoring, and trafficking awareness programs that constitute a solid educational framework. Indirectly, it cultivates confidence, it empowers women in their communities to rise above gender stigma, it equips women with the expertise and ambition to pursue financial independence, and even protects other girls in the village from being targeted by traffickers.
That’s why we believe that educating one girl enlightens a village.
What better investment could there be?
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