When I met Priya, I was struck by the hope she carried, despite how hard life had been.

Her story could easily have been defined by poverty, family breakdown, violence, and exploitation. Yet the young woman I met was not looking back at what she had endured. She was looking ahead. 

Priya spoke about university, studying for a Bachelor of Hotel Management and building a career in Nepal’s hospitality industry. She dreamed of earning her own income, living independently, and supporting her mother. 

These may sound like ordinary hopes for a young woman. But knowing something of Priya’s journey, I understood just how extraordinary they were. Her hope had not grown out of an easy life. It had survived an extraordinarily difficult one. 

Growing up amid domestic violence, family breakdown, and poverty, Priya saw how hard her mother worked to support their family. As the eldest child, she felt a responsibility to help. 

When an opportunity arose to earn money through local orchestra (dance) performances, Priya took it. She loved dancing and wanted to contribute to her family. But what appeared to be an opportunity exposed her to sexual exploitation and an unsafe working environment, where young women can face pressure from employers and customers, limited control over their working conditions, and little protection from harassment, coercion or abuse. 

Later, Priya attempted to cross Nepal’s southern border into India with friends, searching for something better. At the border, counsellors from our partner organisation, Aashish Social Service Nepal, recognised that she was vulnerable. They spoke with her about unsafe migration and trafficking—and offered her another choice. 

That choice eventually led Priya back to the classroom. 

Through EDM’s Pathways to Potential program, Priya returned to formal education and enrolled in Grade 11. Despite years of disruption, she completed her higher secondary education with outstanding results. Now, with EDM’s support, she has started her university degree. 

Priya’s story demonstrates why education is so powerful in preventing exploitation. 

Being out of school does not automatically mean a girl will be trafficked. Trafficking is complex and is never caused by one factor alone. However, the same circumstances that interrupt a girl’s education—poverty, gender inequality, family instability and limited employment opportunities—can also increase her vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. 

When a young woman has little education, no independent income and few prospects, an offer of work elsewhere can feel like a lifeline—a chance to support her family, escape poverty and build a different future.  But in a trafficker’s hands, hope becomes the very thing that lets them in.

This is one of the cruelest realities of trafficking: it so often begins not with force, but with a promise. 

That is why trafficking cannot only be about stopping danger.

We must also create genuine alternatives – safe, credible pathways towards the future a girl is already searching for.

I had the privilege of creating the name Pathways to Potential, and I chose it very deliberately. I believe in the inherent potential of every girl our border team’s intercept. It places education at its heart, surrounded by the practical and personal support that makes learning possible: safe accommodation, stability, encouragement and people who continue to believe in a young woman until she can fully believe in herself. 

The goal is not simply to help a girl achieve better grades. It is to help her build a life in which she can increasingly stand on her own—and, in doing so, lay a foundation for generations to come. 

Because when a girl is educated, the impact does not end with her. It reaches into the family she may one day support, the workplace she may help shape, and the community in which her voice can carry greater weight. It influences the choices she is able to make for her own children and the expectations she passes on to them. 

This is how the cycle begins to change. One girl’s education can interrupt patterns of poverty, dependence and limited choice that have shaped a family for generations. It can replace vulnerability with knowledge, silence with agency, and mere survival with possibility. The opportunity given to one young woman today can become the platform from which an entire family rises tomorrow. 

Education will not erase every challenge Priya faces. But it has changed what is possible—not only for Priya, but potentially for every life her courage and opportunity will touch. 

That is why education matters. That is why every daughter matters. And that is why education is a game changer. 

Janelle Payne 

Head of International Projects and Partnerships
Every Daughter Matters 

Will you move her from,

“What will happen to me?” to

“What will I become?”