Welcome to The Didi Project
We are a group of professional women working to provide educational opportunities for women and children in Nepal. We believe that improving education is the best way to ensure a better future for the people of Nepal. We use our personal encounters and experiences to identify persons and families in need, and causes where we can successfully use our skills and resources. We aim to pursue projects using innovation without duplication. We work with communities, non-governmental organizations, and government institutions to create new sustainable partnerships for positive change.
We invite you to join us as a Didi (respected sister) or a Bhai (respected brother).
Our hope is that the energy of our cooperative accomplishments will "vibrate on and on creating an endless wave of goodwill, child to child, person to person."
Didi Projects
The Didis are currently involved in a variety of projects. Each of these has evolved from a need we have seen during our annual visits to Nepal.
Sold (Bechiyeki), Anti-Trafficking Campaign
Each year thousands of Nepali village girls growing into womanhood become vulnerable to international criminal practices of sex slavery. The book, SOLD, by American author Patricia McCormick, translated and published into Nepali by the Didi Project as BECHIYEKI, is now the powerful centerpiece of our extensive and growing anti-child trafficking educational campaign. In 2009 the Didi Project acquired the Nepalese translation rights to Sold and hired two talented Nepali language translators to produce the Nepali edition which was published in 2010 and is now enjoying a wide and growing distribution throughout Nepal. This past year Bechiyeki was read aloud to 31 districts of the country on Radio Nepal, broadcast on the women's rights program, Wakalat, which is sponsored by the Legal Aid and Consultancy Centre (LACC) in Kathmandu.
Watch Interview with SOLD author Patricia McCormick
SOLD was written after Patricia McCormick spent time in Nepal and India where she became increasingly aware of how young Nepali girls are sold by poor families and taken from their Himalayan villages to the red light district of Calcutta. Appalled by what she witnessed Patricia felt an urgency to make the plight of these trafficked young victims known to the outside world. Her book SOLD is a wonderfully crafted English language novella written in a poignant and poetic style that tells the story of Lakshmi, a happy 13-year-old schoolgirl from a poor family living in a rural village in Nepal. Lakshmi's stepfather sells his innocent stepdaughter into prostitution in a Calcutta brothel where she is imprisoned and forced to work as a child prostitute for a year before her ultimate rescue and uncertain future.
Individual Sponsorships
We continue to provide special help for individual families in Nepal whom we have known and loved for many years. We have provided financial support for their education, medical expenses, and occupational training.
Trekking with a Purpose
Come with us on a special trek during our October visits. We will visit schools and projects in Kathmandu and travel to rural areas of Nepal to see what is being done there and to identify new areas in which we can help. We will trek with Three Sisters Adventure Trekking, which is based in Pokhara and is owned and operated by and for women, using all female staff, even including the porters!
