Samrakshak Samuha Nepal (SASANE), which means “Let’s protect ourselves” in Nepali, is a grassroots organization in Nepal, run by and for survivors and those at-risk of human trafficking.

SASANE was founded and registered in 2008 by a group of seven female survivors of various forms of trafficking, who joined together on a mission to end the physical and sexual exploitation of Nepalese people, particularly women and children. SASANE developed innovative solutions to break cycles of exploitation, encourage and empower survivors to seek justice, and reintegrate them into society as valued and respected leaders of their community.

• The development of SASANE’s Mountain Village Education Program, funding essential teaching materials for seven trained SASANE paralegals living in seven separate villages in Nuwakot. The teachers provide classes on basic literacy skills and awareness-raising on human rights issues. These life skills and literacy trainings were expanded to three new villages in 2017, at the request of those villages;
• Expansion of the Mountain Village Education Program in 2016 to include livelihood generation initiatives, reducing the vulnerability of young women to trafficking, offering opportunities for income generation;
• Essential running costs of the Mountain Village Education Program, including: salary support for the Program Coordinator, an intensive teacher training course in Kathmandu for 10 young women from the rural villages, and salary support for each of these young teachers;
• Capacity building on Monitoring & Evaluation, so that SASANE could better measure the impact of their groundbreaking programs.

In keeping with our philosophy, GoPhil focuses on fundraising and capacity building for smaller, less stable organizations to help them grow, until they are more fiscally secure and able to apply for other larger grants, and then we slowly scale down our support.

SASANE became much stronger and more self-sustainable over the years with support from the GoPhil community. In the final year of our partnership, SASANE secured some much larger grants and successfully launched several income-generating programs to generate funds for their nonprofit arm. As a result of these developments, SASANE did not submit a grant application in 2020. It was wonderful to see SASANE reach this turning point.