| News - Friday, December 29, 2006
Helping women half a world away
Local teen sets her sights on aiding abused women in Bhutan
by Alexandria Rocha
Ellery Dake is spending the holidays in New Zealand with her family, but her thoughts are with the women of Bhutan, a small South Asian country tucked into the Himalayas.
Through the Global Education Action Network, Ellery, a junior at Castilleja School, visited Bhutan in August and met with women who had stopped going to school at age 12 to get married. They told her stories about polygamy and alcohol abuse. Despite their struggles, the women were warm and hospitable and didn't want Ellery to lift a finger during her stay.
Upon returning home, Ellery's mind kept returning to the rising levels of sexual abuse and domestic violence in the small country, which has been considered one of the most isolated in the world. She decided to start a local effort to raise money and awareness for an organization that helps women in Bhutan flee abusive conditions.
"Bhutan is hurtling into the 21st Century and with that comes a lot of problems," Ellery said last week, sitting in Castilleja's state-of-the art library. "They get (TV) stations from the neighboring countries now, so they see shows that sexualize women."
Her new group, Club RENEW, is modeled after the Bhutanese organization of the same name developed by a Bhutan queen in 2004. RENEW, which stands for Respect, Educate, Nurture and Empower Women, provides sexually and physically battered women ages 15 to 30 with counseling and small grants to start better lives.
Castilleja's club is in the beginning stages, but so far about 15 girls meet every week to discuss their latest efforts.
The club has applied for a $15,000 grant from the Women's Foundation of California and made connections with the Global Fund for Women. In January, during Castilleja's annual Global Week, the girls will raffle photos to raise funds. Ellery said the plan is to donate any money they receive to RENEW.
The club makes Ellery one of the many teenagers in Palo Alto who have looked beyond their front porch to give their time and energy to worldly causes.
"It's so great to have the club, so it's not just me," Ellery said. "I wasn't sure if people would be interested, but it's paying off."
It was a teacher at Castilleja who told Ellery about the Global Education Action Network, or GLEAN, an organization that takes high school and college students on expeditions to remote countries for research and cultural studies. Ellery chose GLEAN's Bhutan expedition randomly -- she knew little about the country.
She signed up early for the trip and took a course at Stanford University called "Bhutan, Buddhism and Gross National Happiness" in the spring. What she learned ended up coming into play later.
GLEAN requires its students to pick a specific issue to study during their travels. Other students on Ellery's trip chose disaster relief, the environment and religion. Something about Bhutan's globalization and the emergence of female objectification caught Ellery's attention.
"I've never perceived any discrimination in my own life as a woman," she said. "But as I'm getting older, I'm picking up on more of those things in society."
Ellery recalled a trip to Utah with friends, during which someone suggested the group tell "women jokes."
A boy got the ball rolling: "Why don't women need umbrellas? Because there is no rain between the kitchen and the bedroom."
"These boys had an unlimited supply of jokes," Ellery said, shaking her head.
Ellery and her four fellow travelers were only in Bhutan for one week, but they were able to meet with numerous people during that short time. They stayed with a family in a room reserved for traveling monks, played with the family's children and worked in its rice fields.
The Palo Alto teen saw firsthand what living in an isolated nation is like. Before visiting Bhutan, Ellery thought the people there would be much worse off than she is.
She met a farmer, however, who changed her mind.
He said she couldn't pay him to move to the United States. He told her that people in his country work hard and come home at the end of the day with physical pain. In the United States, he said, people come home with not only physical pain, but "intellectual pain," too, such as stress and competition. He would rather endure the physical pain.
"I agree with parts of that. It's a simpler life over there," Ellery said. "It all comes back to the 'Gross National Happiness.'"
However, the rapid changes in Bhutan have weakened family networks, according to RENEW's Web site. As families move from rural areas into urban ones, there are fewer jobs and seats in schools for women. This is leaving women without education vulnerable to exploitation.
Ellery plans to return to Bhutan next summer to intern at RENEW with a few of her club's members. In the meantime, she will continue leading her local efforts.
"We want to cut (the abuse) off before it gets out of hand," she said.
Staff Writer Alexandria Rocha can be e-mailed at arocha@paweekly.com. | 
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