About The Esther Benjamins Trust
The Esther Benjamins Trust is the leading UK registered charity dedicated solely to transforming the lives of Nepal’s most vulnerable children and young people.
The charity rescues and rehabilitates victims of child trafficking, offers residential refuge to street children and the dependents of prisoners, and provides education support to deaf and disabled young people in Nepal.
These are achieved through two main programmes:
PACT – Programme Against Child Trafficking
Child trafficking is rampant in rural areas of Nepal, where chronic poverty and alcohol dependency lead families to make decisions beyond our comprehension. For as little as £15, children as young as six are sold to agents who target the poor.
The children are then transported across the border into India, where they are sold to circus owners. In addition to being forced to work 18-hour days as performers without pay, these children endure mental, physical and sexual abuse. Their enslavement can last anything up to 15 years.
The Esther Benjamins Trust rescues these children and returns them to their native Nepal to begin their rehabilitation. If appropriate, children are reunited with their families, but where this would expose the child to re-trafficking, they are invited to join our residential rehabilitation programme.
Access to education, psychological support and vocational training is paramount within the charity’s objectives of giving these young people the requisite skills to build happy independent lives not governed by the greed of others.
CEDAR – Child Education, Development and Reintegration Programme
CEDAR extends beyond the provision of basic childcare to offer compassionate and constructive residential rehabilitation to street children and the children of prisoners.
Children are encouraged to pursue academic, social and recreational activities that afford them the best chance of escaping poverty and developing into intelligent, independent young people ready to confront the challenging environment of Nepal.
Our history
In January 1999, Esther Benjamins committed suicide, stating childlessness as the reason for her action.
Her husband Philip Holmes responded to this tragedy by retiring from the British Army and setting up a charity to benefit vulnerable children. Connections with the Brigade of Gurkhas led the Trust to focus on Nepal, one of the world’s most impoverished nations.
The charity initially concentrated on providing residential care to the children of prisoners – who until then were forced to live in squalid jails alongside their convicted parents (whose crimes often emanated from extreme poverty). With parental consent, these children were moved into our care where they enjoyed access to education, healthcare and most important, a childhood. Street children were also offered similar refuge.
Beyond the basic provision of childcare, the Trust has always set out to encourage the children to pursue activities that will enable them to grow into independent young people who can avoid the traps their parents fell into.
Education schemes for deaf and disabled young people have also been supported. Scholarships are granted to children whose parents cannot afford fees, in addition to funding a home visit programme for the disabled daycare centre, ensuring children who are not able to travel still receive an education. Capital projects to improve the building infrastructure of two such schools have also been funded.
Since 2004, the Trust's biggest project has been tackling the child trafficking trade from Nepal into India – and the specific problem of children sold into Indian circuses to work as performers in bonded labour.
Its seminal survey revealed that hundreds of Nepalese children, some as young as five-years-old, are currently living and working as performers in circuses. They endure 18-hour days training for and performing dangerous circus acts - and receive frequent beatings should they make a mistake. Stories of mental, physical and sexual abuse are commonplace.
The Trust is working to free these children and bring them back to Nepal, to reunite them with their families, return them to school or employment and give them a chance of a happier future.
So far over 280 children and young people have been rescued from these circuses and provided compassionate residential rehabilitation with a focus on ensuring they have sufficient education and skills to never again be at the mercy of the human trafficking trade.