6000 Street Children in Nepal: Give Them a Home

The last few months have for sure been really eventful. Luckily, all our staff and children have been safe and healthy and observing social distancing very strictly. We have redesigned our child helpline/day care centre building slightly to provide an area for any new children needing emergency assistance so that they can be isolated for 2 weeks. In some new cases, the children were quarantined at the police station and then brought to us to ensure safety of everyone. 

We have had some very sad cases of children being forced to beg on the street with a cobra snake performing for the passers by, children used in the porn industry and many more difficult situations. The staff from our children's home and child helpline have only been able to communicate via phone but they have been exchanging ideas for activities with the children. The children have been occupied with the yoga classes, a lot of crafts, sports and of course classes at home. Last time I had a video call with them, they were watching Bollywood movies so it was difficult to get their attention - so I promised to find them some more educational programmes and movies in English to help them learn in a fun way. I think they'll be watching Indiana Jones soon!

As the lockdown is being eased, we expect to come across more and more children needing assistance - the lockdown was very strict and many people lost their income streams. Many experts predict famine in Nepal and a massive economic disaster. We are prepared to take many more children should the need arise. We are working closely with the local government, the mayor and the local chamber of commerce - we have now started discussions with them to try and arrange jobs for some of the most affected families. We will also provide education for the children from these families, and food and shelter where necessary. 

I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout this difficult time. Thanks to you we are able to help more children and families. Please continue your support when possible. 

Our wonderful staff have been extremely busy this winter and have constantly been assisting new children. We have had some incredibly sad cases but we are very proud of our staff that they have been able to help these children that needed urgent assistance. As a result, these children have a place to stay, good nutritious food, education, love, care and a lot of fun at the moment.

We have recently admitted 2 very young girls who had lived with their dad on streets and the dad passed away. The girls were malnourished, one of them was in a critical condition and we took her to the hospital in Kathmandu where she had a blood transfusion and treatment. She is fine now but still needs a lot of care and is under doctors' observation. We tried tracking their family but nobody so far wants to take responsibility for them so they are saying to us that they are not a real family. A truly heart-breaking story. We are hoping to get the girls to full health soon and provide them with a loving home with us before we can assess the best way forward for them. In the meantime, we are still trying to find any existing family members. Our two lovely staff members, Baby and Sabita, are taking good care of them at the moment. 

Our boys from the children's home come and visit all the children at the Child Helpline on Saturdays and ensure they have a lot of fun with them. There is always a lot of dancing, drawing and sports. The Child Helpline together with the Day Care Centre is proving to be really successful in reaching many of those street children that we weren't able to assist just by running the children's home and we are getting requests for more and more help every day.

And all this is possible just because of your generous support. Please keep supporting us so that we can assist even more children in need. 

Thank you so much