Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Maoists refers to the rebel army that represent a communist wing of the Maoist Party. Between 1996 and 2006, they waged an insurgency against the Royal Nepalese Army, which represent the king’s regime. The children in Little Princes are caught between these two opposing forces. “Children had been taken by traffickers and the door to their village had been slammed shut by the Maoists,” writes Grennan (189).

Although the Maoists claim to be saving Nepal from the king’s rule, most Nepalese do not consider them to be liberators. For example, Maoists imposed a rule that every family should send one child to fight in the rebel army; when they didn’t, the Maoists took the children by force. This policy caused thousands of families to send their children away with child traffickers.

Using donations from his nonprofit, Next Generation Nepal, Grennan founds the Dhaulagiri House in 2006. The Dhaulagiri House functions much like the Little Princes Children’s Home, taking in children who have been trafficked away from their home villages into Kathmandu. Some of the children are orphans while some have living parents who may or may not be capable of retrieving their children. It is at the Dhaulagiri House where Grennan brings the seven lost children once he finds them dispersed around Kathmandu.