ONE ISLAND ONE VILLAGE
In Guernsey we live in freedom, but around the world there are families trapped in slavery. We want to share our freedom with families who have never known liberty. We want to make sure their children have a chance to go to school and that the parents have real work with choices. We do this through our One Island One Village campaign.
There are whole villages in Northern India that are trapped in hereditary slavery - imagine your grandparents, your parents, yourself, and your children all being enslaved by a local landowner family. No one has ever been to school, no one has ever been allowed to leave the tiny village, and the girls and women are always assaulted by the men of the slaveholder family.
We work closely with a local anti-slavery group to turn this situation around. Here's how it works: with our support the local liberation group goes into the village and sets up a school. The slaveholder doesn't normally object because the school provides free lunches to all the children and their mothers that come to the school to cook it. The slave master is thinking "Great! Other people are feeding my slaves for me!" But, as they cook together, and they teach and learn together, the idea and hope for freedom is being planted in the minds and hearts of the villagers. Soon the children and the parents start asking about live outside of slavery, and the "school teachers" (many of them ex-slaves themselves) start teaching confidence and showing how if the whole village stands up together they can break their chains.
This system of liberation is well-tuned. It takes about three years and £30,000 to bring a village to freedom - that's around 130 men, women, and children freed from hereditary slavery and getting the education and support they need to lead full and meaningful lives.
Through your generosity two villages have come to freedom and we are currently supporting four more.
