Nirmala was the only daughter born to a very poor family of farmers in rural Nepal. There was not a single day when there was enough food for all of them. Some days, there was none and she would go to bed hungry.

At the age of 10, out of desperation, she ran away with friends to Kathmandu and eventually started to work in a carpet factory. Her hands became bloody and bruised, but she was never paid a single rupee.

A GoodWeave inspector found Nirmala and brought her to our transit home for rescued children. When she arrived, Nirmala didn’t even have shoes on her feet. Our social worker and counselor, Rajendra, remembers her early days at our center. “We were focused on making her laugh and play. And slowly, she started coming back to normal.”

Nirmala is now 17 and in the ninth grade at LAB School, a topnotch academic institution in Nepal. After years of missed classes, she is catching up to her peers. She recently started to journal about her life. The cover of her diary declares: My True Story Begins Now.