Our Sansar (Nepal)
Our Sansar is a UK-registered charity providing education, shelter, and welfare to the most disadvantaged children in Nepal for whom little or no help is forthcoming.
Our Sansar focuses on Province 2 in Southern Nepal, where there are about 400 homeless children and no other organisations working to assist them. It is the most populous province in Nepal, with more than 10,000 cases a year of violence against girls and women, the highest number of missing children in Nepal, and 50% of children are out of school.
Our Sansar aims to locate children before they are trafficked or cross the border and get involved in illegal activities abroad.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation’s support was directed towards the project “End to Child Labour”, focusing on providing education to children between 6 and 16 years old who have been working in brick factories in Rautahat, Southern Nepal.
There are 162 brick factories in the district, and the overall number of children working in them is estimated to be over 2,500. This project has two phases; firstly, a two-year pilot to assist 93 children and conduct a proper investigation into the rest of the factories, to be able to assist all 2,500 children in phase two.
The overall objective of the project is to stop child labour in Nepal and replicate the project in other parts of the district and ultimately on a national level.
At the end of 2023, all 93 children are in full time education, and attending extra tuition classes as well. All families are being supported with rice on a monthly basis. Our Sansar helped the families to set up a cooperative and the first 10 families have started their first agriculture project. By the end of 2024, all families should be starting different income generation activities.
Our Sansar also opened the first-ever library in the area. By the end of 2024, over 800 children will have access to it, with the aim of inspiring children to attend school. Within the communities where Our Sansar operates, 75% of children do not attend school and they are hoping the library will help change that.
Finally, none of the children have gone back to work at the factories and this is the biggest achievement for Our Sansar.
In parallel, Our Sansar signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Labour Department to run their Child Labour Free Campaign - a certification programme for companies that stop employing children. In September 2023, the police and local brick factories associations committed to regular monitoring of the situation and to enforce the law if employers start employing young children again. Our Sansar is also finalising the programme participation with the mayor and other local political leaders despite political frictions.
This project contributes to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
