Pushpa Basnet is a Nepali social worker and the Founder/President of Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) and Butterfly Home, non profit organizations, in Kathmandu, Nepal. She and her organization work to strengthen the rights of children living behind bars with their incarcerated parents. Her efforts have been recognized by the national and international media, since she was nominated for and subsequently won the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year Award.
Basnet started her career at the age of 21, while she was still an undergraduate in Social Work. As part of her college assignment, she visited the women prison in Kathmandu. She was dismayed at seeing the conditions of children living with their parents behind the bars. She raised 70,000 rupees (roughly $885) from her close friends and sister, and started a non-profit organization -The Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) to provide a day care program to the children, in 2005.
In 2007, she opened a residential home for kids to live outside of prison year round while still visiting their mothers on holidays. Today, she has assisted more than 100 children of incarcerated parents. She runs a day care center for the prison children and a residential home for older ones. She has also helped to provide alternative residence, school enrollment, free meals and medical care to them. In 2009, sponsored by Change Fusion Nepal, she started a program to coach parents to make handicrafts inside the cell. The main objective of the program is to make the female prisoners as well as former prisoners to involve in income generating activities through which they can sustain their livelihood and contribute towards raising their children.
She, along with her organization, coordinates with prison administrators to rescue children behind bars throughout urban and rural areas of Nepal, and help them break the cycle of crime and poverty.
Please view the clips below to get inspired by this amazing lady: