Amrita Acharia in charity drive
Game of Thrones actress Amrita Acharia has joined the online appeal for funds for the charity ChoraChori that has rescued 147 trafficked and displaced Nepali children from slavery and abuse in India.
The 31-year-old Nepali-Ukrainian actress is based in Norway and acted in HBO’s Game of Thrones, UK tv series The Good Karma Hospital, the Norwegian tv series Acquitted and in the forthcoming animation The Missing Link.
Says Acharia: “My father was educated, and he made sure we were educated and taught self-respect. When we moved away from Nepal, it was that education that gave us stability and the chance to follow our dreams. I love it that ChoraChori works on empowering young girls after these experiences, and gives them tools rather than just rescuing and dumping them in an orphanage”.
Acharia was born in Kathmandu but her family moved to England when she was seven and after spending some years in the Ukraine, attended High School in Norway where her father is an obstetrician. She is now looking forward to going back to Nepal after 16 years to visit ChoraChori’s facilities in Thaukel.
Most of the rescued children are boys whom ChoraChori has reunited with their families who hadn’t heard from the boys in years and had come to believe them to be dead. Most of the children had left home in search of work before being trafficked, were apprehended by the Indian authorities and later rescued and brought back to Nepal.
Some of the children were runaways from domestic abuse whom ChoraChori funds through vocational training and into good employment. ChoraChori last year rescued Nepali girls from a notorious children’s home in Muzaffarpur where at least 34 residents were gang raped by care home officials and outsiders. These girls are currently supported at ChoraChori’s child trauma management centre alongside a growing number of domestic child rape victims.
“We’ve only just begun” says ChoraChori Founder Lt Col (retd.) Philip Holmes. “We know that there are still scores of Nepali children trapped in Indian institutions and the Muzaffarpur case has brought into sharp focus just how dangerous these centres are for children.”
With Brexit, ChoraChori is feeling the effects of a financial squeeze in the UK charitable sector. Which is why it is launching ‘The Big Give’ online Christmas appeal. For one week only from noon GMT on Tuesday 27 November, all online donations are automatically being doubled in value in the charity’s main annual fundraising drive.
Says Holmes: “The truth is that some of the rescued children are so young that they even lack the vocabulary to describe what has been done to them. That is heart-breaking, but I have been encouraged and inspired by how ChoraChori-Nepal has risen to the challenge.”
To see Amrita’s video appeal and donate to ChoraChori through The Big Give visit www.chorachori.org