The Dhamma Moli Project is founded by Venerables Molini and Dhamma Vijaya of Nepal.
The project provides an opportunity for refuge and education in a Buddhist monastery school for young Nepalese girls at risk of falling victim to human traffickers who sell them into brothels and circuses in India."
In addition to building a school for the girls, the sisters run an educational program, traveling to mountain villages of war-torn Nepal finding girls at risk and educating the rural populace about the deceptions and ploys used by traffickers to trick families into selling or sending their daughters away in the hope of a better life.
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To further the efforts of Venerables Molini and Dhamma Vijaya, Dhamma Moli has been
included as one of the recipient of the Bodhi Mandala grant.
Dhamma Moli in the news
Buddhist Nuns Seek Hope for Nepali Slaves
By Valerie Burba. Dayton City Paper, April 21, 2006
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, its impoverished state the fundamental cause of girl trafficking — or the selling of young girls into prostitution — in the country’s rural areas.
Girl trafficking occurs via kidnapping and the direct selling of children into prostitution by their families under the guise of false employment and marriage brokers. Illiteracy and poverty make it easy to be lured by the hope of economic opportunity.
In Nepal, young girls are sold across the border to brothels in India, where prostitution is legal. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 girls, between the ages of 7-16, are trafficked each year from Nepal to India. Currently, more than 200,000 Nepalese girls are involved in the Indian sex trade. Among these girls, cases of HIV/AIDS run rampant, and they're sent back to their homeland once they become ill.
Efforts to stop girl trafficking have been seriously constrained by the civil war that has engulfed Nepal for several years. In fact, the constant turmoil has only exacerbated the crisis.
For several years, two Buddhist nuns, the Venerable Molini and the Venerable Dhamma Vijaya, from Burma and Nepal respectively, have been traveling and exercising their own social efforts to combat the girl trafficking crisis, which includes visits to rural villages to educate the populace.
“Every day in the newspapers and on television, we hear about girls disappearing,” Sister Molini said. “[Four years ago], we read that 5,000 girls who disappeared were sent back to Nepal because they got sick [with HIV]. We visited with many girls in a [hospital] camp in Kathmandu, and the oldest one was just 13 years. And we thought to ourselves, ‘We are taking care of the girls after they get sick, but why not take care of them before this situation happens?’ Innocent girls lack the knowledge to protect themselves from the hunters, so prevention is the answer.”
According to the sisters, once girls are placed in Indian brothels, escaping their servitude is virtually impossible. Girls are continually abused (physically, sexually and psychologically) and
live in fear of arrest and imprisonment.
“Some Nepali girls do manage to escape the brothels and may return to Nepal, but it is very
rare,” Sister Molini stated. “There was one girl [who was rescued]. She had an abortion and
became very sick with a fever, but the brothel owner still expected her to work. A man came in, a customer, and he saw her condition and took pity on her. She said to him, ‘I want to die in my home.’ And so he helped her get back to Nepal. She came home, but then she went to the [hospital] camp [after she was diagnosed] with HIV.”
Sisters Molini and Dhamma Vijaya hold doctorates in Buddhist studies and have made several teaching tours of the United States, including stops at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the University of Dayton, and the Yellow Springs Dharma Center. On Wednesday, March 29, and Thursday, April 6, the nuns presented two lectures at the Gar Drolma Buddhist Center in Dayton, in which they not only provided lectures on Buddhism but also information on their Dhamma Moli project, which is a monastery/school (termite-infested and under reconstruction since May 2005) in Kathmandu for young Nepali girls.
Dhamma Moli (Summit of the Dharma) is a haven intended to shelter and educate at-risk girls
within a Buddhist monastic environment. Under the nuns’ tutelage, the girls will acquire the skills necessary either to find work to support themselves or to further their study of Buddhism at a sister monastery.
Currently, the nuns have three girls who live with them on a temporary basis until construction of the monastery is completed. The Dhamma Moli project is relatively small and funded entirely from donations, and the sisters’ current goal is to house 10-15 girls. But with so many at-risk girls in Nepal and so few beds available, what is the criteria for determining which girls are accepted into Dhamma Moli?
“Basically, it would depend upon the condition,” Sister Molini said. “Certainly we would favor
those children who are orphans because they have no one. If we met girls who were sick or
disabled, then of course, we would want to take them.”
Girls who test positive for HIV/AIDS are prohibited from studying at the monastery; rather, they must live at a hospital camp in order to receive the best medical treatment.
“It’s very sad,” said Sister Molini. “But for those girls who have HIV/AIDS, a [hospital] camp can give them the medicine that we do not have.”
But when HIV-positive girls first return to Nepal, they are often forced to live in hospital camps or return to prostitution in Nepal after being shunned by their families and communities. With Nepal’s cultural preference for male children, girls are discriminated against and considered an additional economic burden, as parents must provide a dowry for marriage. Traditionally, once females leave their family home, they can’t easily return.
“I have talked to many girls in the [hospital] camps [in Nepal], and they say the same thing — ‘I would like to go back home,’” Sister Molini said. “But because of the culture, parents don’t want to keep the girls for a long time in the home, so when they come back from India, they don’t want them.”
“One girl came back [to Nepal] four years after she disappeared,” Sister Dhamma Vijaya added. “She went to her home and when her mama saw her, her mama asked, ‘Why [did] you come back?’ And the girl had tears [running] down her face. I spoke to her mama and she said to me, ‘Inside, I love my daughter, but I cannot accept her in my house,’ and she cried.”
Even though Sisters Molini and Dhamma Vijaya are on an arduous quest to establish their school against the backdrop of an impoverished, patriarchal society, as Buddhists they believe that social action is the highest aim.
“To others, our project is very small; however, to us, it is very big because there has been no prevention in Nepal,” Sister Molina said. “Something is better than nothing.”
For more info about Dhamma Moli, visit www.dhammamoli.org.