By Margaret Maccoll
When Mel and Craig Manly of Eumundi decided to help orphans in Nepal, they had no idea it would lead to a court case, a project to reunite children with their families and a submission to the inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia.
In 2006, the couple became involved with Forget Me Not a not-for-profit organisation which established a children’s charity in conjunction with a Nepalese partnership which is a requirement for a foreign non-government organisation in the country.
Forget Me Not CEO Andrea Nave said the group ran an orphanage in Nepal for eight years under a board that included lawyers, and housed 20 girls whose documentation showed they were orphans.
After Forget Me Not appointed its own company director, the girls started telling them they weren’t orphans.
“We had death certificates for the parents,” Mel said. “They were all fake. They were paper orphans.”
“I couldn’t sleep at night,” Andrea said. “These children were being cared for by us. I had held these children’s hands.”
Forget Me Not acted immediately. They took their Nepalese partner to court and won, and over 18 months reunited every girl with their families. None of them were orphans.
Over the past three years, the organisation has reunited 88 children in similar situations in Nepal, India and Uganda with their families.
Andrea said voluntourism, where well-meaning tourists pay often large amounts of money to ‘give back’ to communities by visiting orphanages, was driving this separation of children from families.
To populate the orphanages and meet the tourist demand, orphanage directors send scouts to poor villages to recruit children, telling parents that their children will have a better education and healthcare at the orphanage. Parents often pay boarding fees or unwittingly sign over custody.
“They treat children as a commodity,” Andrea said. “The children grow up with a lack of bonding, and then can’t form lives outside the orphanage walls.”
Forget Me Not has united with 15 organisations including Griffith University, Save the Children Australia, Families Australia and tour companies Flight Centre and Intrepid Group to make a submission to the Inquiry to ReThink orphanages.
They are recommending Australian governments, businesses, non-government organisations and individuals stop supporting residential care institutions in developing countries and current funding and volunteering be recognised to be encouraging child trafficking.
Forget Me Not members will appear on 3 August as expert witnesses before the Public Hearings of the Inquiry. A report from the Inquiry is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
