4th March 2011
Volunteering abroad can be an experience that changes a person’s outlook on life, but in some special cases it leads to much more.
Conor Grennan’s experience of volunteering in Nepal is one such instance, where a 3 month volunteer trip led to a lifetime committed to tackling child trafficking.
Grennan volunteered at a Nepalese orphanage in 2004, and having fallen in love with the orphans there, he returned a year later to be reunited, only to find that the children had disappeared.
Grennan discovered that the children had been moved to protect them from child trafficking, which had grown prevalent during the chaos of the civil war. Child trafficking had become a profitable business for those willing to take advantage of impoverished families and abduct their children for them to be sold as servants and labourers or to collect donations from benevolent tourists.
Although the children Grennan had worked with had been lucky to escape, they had still had to suffer separation from their families and Grennan was shocked into action. Back in the USA, he formed the non-profit organisation, Next Generation Nepal, which aimed to help reunite Nepalese children with their families.
Nowadays NGN is working to stop child trafficking at the source by educating families about the practice and addressing the poverty that produces the situation.
Reflecting on his experience, Grennan considers himself to be an average man who stumbled upon greatness through volunteering. He considers his story to be “proof that it’s the act of volunteering itself that gives people the passion and skills….All you have to do is take that very first step”.
Find out more about volunteering in Nepal with Inspire.
