GENSHAI PROJECTS

We are all born to create. And it is often in these moments of creation that we feel the most alive and most ourselves.

Unfortunately, for many of the world’s children, opportunities to dream and create are determined by harsh realities present before birth –extreme poverty, armed conflict, hunger, violence, disease, etc. 

Genshai works to help individuals living in extreme conditions meet their basic needs – so that an individual’s prospects for future success and thriving depend less on the lottery of birth. Overtime we have narrowed our focus areas to meet these four basic human needs:

Meeting Basic Human Needs

Providing essential supplies kits for the homeless youth of Utah

Quadrant: Health

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

Scope of Problem.

Utah’s schools reported about 10,000 kids were homeless this fall — a 10% rise from 2021 to 2022, according to state enrollment data.

It is reported that over 1800 youth are undocumented and living on the streets of Salt Lake City, Utah. 

These youth typically or forced out fo their homes to do religious beliefs, sexual orientation or domestic abuse within the homes. 

Many within a matter of a week or two are subjected to drugs, gangs, or sexual abuse. 

The youth lack access to basic essential supplies and seasonal clothing. Genshai has designed our program to feature kits that include these supplies and Genshai messaging. Each note is hand written to let the individuals know that they are loved and to never treat themselves small. 

Providing opportunities for growth and development for children with disabilities

Quadrant: Health

Location: Lugazi, Uganda

Scope of Problem

Children with disabilities are among the most neglected populations in developing societies, lacking policies on the national level and resources within communities to support the children and their families. This is not different in Uganda, where there are approximately 3 million children with disabilities, with sparse resources scattered throughout the country serving only a small percentage of these children. The effort and expense of care-taking for these children becomes a strain on families, often pushing them further into poverty. Societal stigmas are prevalent that cause families to consider these children a curse, leading to further shame, neglect, and abuse. With these factors combined, children often live out lives of isolation within their homes, leading to increased cognitive, emotional, and physical health complications, and ultimately premature death compared to their peers.

Providing life giving water through drilling borewells

Quadrant: Food & Water

Location: Hyderabad, India

Scope of Problem.

Access to clean water, hygiene, and safe sanitation is a basic human necessity, and yet about 2.3 billion people in our world lack access to basic sanitation services & sustainable water, such as latrines or toilets. This, of course, causes devastating effects on the health, safety, and well-being of nearly half the people on our planet. We help implement clean water and sanitation initiatives around the world.

Health: Inadequate water and sanitation is a leading cause of infectious diseases including typhoid, cholera, and dysentery worldwide. Diarrheal disease is the leading cause of death for children under 5, with nearly 1,000 children dying each day due to sanitation-related complications.

Safety: Water retrieval due to lack of access poses extreme safety risks, particularly for women and girls as they are forced to travel long distances to find water. This includes increased risk of violence such as physical, verbal, and sexual assault, with affects going beyond physical to long-term psychological damage.

Well-being: The health effects resulting from lack of water and sanitation access is a major contributor to impaired cognition and stunting, both of which are permanent conditions beyond childhood. This leads to lower academic and employment opportunities, throwing individuals and societies into generational poverty.

Protective Shelter for underage survivors of sexual & labor exploitation

Quadrant: Shelter

Location: Kathmandu, Nepal

Scope of Problem.

The underground world of human trafficking has continued to grow turning into the fastest growing criminal enterprise of the 21st century. Traffickers make an estimated 150 billion per year by selling and exploiting humans. Whether it starts as a job offer or a relationship with a seemingly caring partner, many men, women, and children are coerced or trapped via fraud into compulsive sex labor. The United Nations Office of Crime and Drugs reported that approximately 1 in 5 of people being exploited today for commercial sex are children.  

With almost 20% of forced sexual exploitation being children, that means almost four million children around the world are subjected to abuse that can potentially affect them for decades: STIs, anxiety, psychological development delays, and threats of violence and familial abandonment are just a handful of the negative consequences that these victims may experience due to their abuse. What can also be significantly difficult to overcome, is the social ostracism rescued victims are often subjected to due to cultural and societal stigma –this is especially the case in more developing and rural locations.  

Today, there are an estimated 40.3 million individuals trapped in modern slavery—including conditions of forced labor, sexual exploitation, child marriage, and domestic servitude.  

Nepal’s public infrastructure offers little resources for aftercare and reintegration of children affected by sever forms of sexual crimes and sex trafficking. Criminal justice processes and lack of child protection rights can often favor traffickers over victims. When cases of victimization, rape, exploitation, and trauma do arise; law enforcement turn to non-governmentally operated shelters and organizations to hand over trafficked and abused children in need of a long and holistic healing and reintegration process. Children in need of rescue and protective services in Nepal are abundant, whereas adequate organizations to take in those children are not.

Providing access to education to Mexico’s most vulnerable

Quadrant: Education

Location: Chiapas, Mexico

Scope of Problem.

The Mexican state of Chiapas has the highest poverty rates anywhere in the country, with the vast majority of families living below the poverty line. Schooling provides some limited social mobility, but a lack of school infrastructure, limited teacher training, and overall support for teachers means that access and quality are still major issues. In these impoverished communities, economic challenges mean that some families cannot afford to send their children to school, while at the same time, students who do finish school struggle to find formal employment.

Lack of access to education widens the inequality gaps worldwide. In the south of Mexico, youth living in indigenous and rural communities face systematic barriers to their basic right to education. In Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, the supply of public high schools is scarce, which means that students, coming from the most marginalized communities, need to walk an average of an hour by foot every day, or pay for transportation if available. On top of the long distances and the precarious learning

environments, young students also deal with a life-determinant decision: continue studying or dropping out of school to work, either in subsistence farming or migrate elsewhere. These conditions explain why Chiapas is, historically, the poorest state in Mexico and has the lowest educational level in the country.