A Few Things that Surprised Us | We are faced with continuing to pay the education costs of the girls already in the program, plus adding a lot more.(Around 20,000 to 25,000 girls are bonded away each year.) To truly “save” a girl, we must commit to her for the long haul – not one year, but several, until her mother earns enough through income generation programs to pay her daughter’s school costs. We cannot make promises to a child, a family, a community in one year, and then abandon them the next.

Our efforts have had some unexpected side effects and challenges. Because of the large number of children we brought back home to attend school, the small village schools in the area are in a state of collapse. Some classes have 150 students – far too many to fit into a classroom, so they listen at the door or the barred window, or the class is held outdoors in the searing heat of summer or the clammy cold of winter.

In order to meet this challenge we have built 36 new classrooms in the area with concrete instead of tin roofs (the outside temperature is often over 100, and the tin roof magnifies the heat).

For those who still find it difficult to enter school in a low grade, we conduct intensive literacy and numeracy classes for nine months and then they are free to join vocational training, if they prefer. We have an excellent program to teach sewing and knitting to some of these girls. This has very good potential for generating income because there is a ready-made market in the 3000 returned girls in the area who need school uniforms annually.

Click here to learn about the experiences of these young girls in their own words.

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