Shanti Foundation

Shanti Foundation

Shanti Tamang Lama formally established Shanti Foundation in 2016, organizing a coalition of sex trafficking survivors and HIV-affected women who had been delivering relief since Nepal's 2015 earthquake. The entity is legally structured as a foundation, registered in the United States with program operations centered in Nepal. Its mandate — a world free of stigma and discrimination — flows from the direct experience of its principals rather than traditional wealth transfer. The foundation deploys capital through three interconnected channels: direct emergency response and medical support, survivor-led advocacy networks, and a handicraft social enterprise that provides economic reintegration for program participants. Geographic focus remains on Nepal, where it operates the Shanti Foundation Community House in Kathmandu as a residential support facility. Strategic partnerships include The Freedom Fund, a major donor backing anti-trafficking initiatives across South Asia. Operational scale is modest and measured by program reach rather than assets under management. The organization maintains a survivor network with elected leadership, including treasurer Rojisha Adhikari, and participates in two coalition bodies: the Bagmati Province Human Trafficking Survivor Network and the National Network for Safe Migration. Daughter Kranti Tamang serves as Organization Development Officer, indicating a deliberate family-integrated leadership model that embeds lived experience into governance. What distinguishes Shanti Foundation structurally is that it functions as an endowment without conventional financial endowment assets — its capital is the credibility and operational knowledge of survivor leadership. It does not manage pooled funds or make grants in the traditional philanthropic sense; instead, it operates programs directly, blending social enterprise revenue with donor partnerships to sustain anti-trafficking work in a country where formal institutional funding channels remain thin.