Staff Spotlight: Chhori Laxmi Maharjan

Chhori Laxmi Maharjan, Head of Ankur Counseling & Training Center

Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan is the Head of NYF’s Ankur Counseling & Training Center. She cherishes daily opportunities to witness emotional healing in the children receiving therapy from her and her team.

“I get to know my client’s needs,” she says. “This is a chance to prepare them for any risks and achievements, as well as to help them address their most prominent issues, such as anxieties, worries, and hopelessness. I can be the safe container for them with a loving, compassionate heart.”

“Nisha”

One young patient, “Nisha*,” came to Chhori’s office when her guardians noticed she was struggling in school and finding it difficult to get along in social settings. Nisha described intense feelings of inner conflict, trust issues, loneliness, and poor self-esteem. As Chhori listened, however, it became clear that Nisha’s personality was joyful, hopeful, and creative. But traumatic experiences in her early life had made Nisha very guarded and distrustful of these traits.

“She mentioned her dream to become a successful person in the future,” Chhori remembers. This dream became a guiding light in Nisha’s healing journey.

Meeting once a week, Chhori and Nisha began coaxing her natural positivity out of hiding. They used a child-centered technique called sandplay therapy.

In the beginning, Nisha’s work revealed themes of deep hopelessness, with only small sparks of joy and playfulness emerging. But as she grew more comfortable, and in coordination with her guardians and teachers, she became kinder and more compassionate towards herself. Her perspective on herself began to shift, and she realized that she possessed the power to change. Gradually, Nisha became more hopeful about the future. She choose to invest more effort in her schoolwork and to open her heart to friends, family, and classmates.

Today, Nisha is still working with Chhori in therapy. But she is doing so with a solid foundation of her own self-worth and making tremendous progress. Chhori feels deeply grateful for the opportunity to help each of her patients explore and overcome the challenges standing between themselves and a joyful future.

*Confidentiality is critical in a therapeutic setting. “Nisha’s” story is a blend of several of Chhori’s past patients, with details changed to protect privacy.

Chhori’s Background

Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan grew up in Kathmandu, in a traditional Newari family. Her father was a carpenter. Her mother managed the household, raising five children.

“My mother truly believes that education is the key to wisdom and freedom,” Chhori says. Her mother made every effort to ensure that all five children had access to this precious opportunity. Chhori took her education very seriously as a result. “I remember wanting to make my mother’s dream come true while I was young.”

One day, as Chhori was about to graduate high school, she came across an Introduction to Psychology book on her uncle’s bookshelf. The material was fascinating to Chhori, who was a thoughtful, emotionally attuned, service-oriented person by nature. “I decided to earn a higher degree to become the one who listens with an empathetic heart,” she says.

Meeting NYF

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology, Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan began working for an organization serving adults and children living with HIV/AIDS. Mental health services are extremely important for individuals living with chronic health conditions, especially those which are life-threatening and highly stigmatized.

She quickly realized that the children and youth in her care were the most vulnerable to developing severe psychosocial issues. “Children need to have the opportunity to process traumatic experiences in a manner consistent with their cognitive and emotional development,” Chhori wrote in her PhD dissertation in 2019. But unfortunately, “clinical psychology and therapeutic interventions are in their infancy in Nepal.”

“Deep in my heart, I felt that I needed to work for children.” In mid-2006, Chhori intersected with NYF leadership, including Som Paneru and Olga Murray. Our organization was searching for a counselor specifically for children and youth, ideally one who specialized in sandplay therapy. “Without a second thought, I applied and joined NYF in October 2006.”

Ankur Counseling Center

Chhori helped to open Ankur Counseling Center right away, in 2006. “Ankur” is Sanskrit for “flower bud,” “sapling,” or “sprout.” Ankur became Nepal’s very first counseling center for children.

The first children to receive care here were the kids living J House and K House, the precursors to Olgapuri Children’s Village, as well as young survivors of the exploitative childhood bondage practice called kamlari. But Ankur’s mission quickly expanded to include beneficiaries of many other NYF programs, with remarkable results.

In 2014, with support from mentors, partners, and friends met through NYF, Chhori took a several-year hiatus from Ankur Counseling Center to travel to San Francisco to pursue her PhD in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She earned her doctorate in 2019. Her dissertation focused on sandplay therapy as a child-focused technique in Nepal’s childcare homes, including case studies from NYF’s work. She paid special attention to the success of sandplay therapy (which was developed originally in the West) on the outcomes for children within an Eastern cultural context.

Fresh PhD in hand, Chhori returned to Ankur Counseling Center. She was more determined than ever to continue offering mental health resources to Nepal’s children.

Childhood Trauma

Childhood trauma is severely disruptive to healthy development. Impacts can last a lifetime, long after a child has been removed to safety. Some common symptoms of those with unprocessed childhood trauma include poor self-care, self-harm, interpersonal struggles and difficulty with authority, trouble expressing emotions (both extreme reactivity and numbing), and more.

Trauma impacts the part of the brain called the “orbitofrontal cortex,” Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan explains in her dissertation. The orbitofrontal cortex oversees complex decision-making, managing the balance between our emotions and analytical thinking. Disruption to its normal development results in learning and behavior problems, and even developmental delays and physical illnesses.

These disruptions include traumas like extreme poverty; homelessness; neglect and/or abuse; a parent’s mental illness or chronic or terminal illness; abandonment or death of parents; natural disasters (like the 2015 earthquake) or wars (like the Nepali Civil War from 1996-2006); displacement; bullying or stigma—and many more.

To “rescue” a child from childhood trauma, the first step is to do everything possible to interrupt that traumatic situation, providing a safe, stable environment with safe, stable adult caregivers. Helping these children to cultivate as many healthy relationships as possible is a crucial protective measure for emotional and mental well-being.

But this is only the beginning, as it does not undo the harm already sustained by the growing brain.

In order to set healthy brain development back on course, it is crucial to also provide these children with the care, support, tools, and space necessary to grapple with these complex, frightening experiences.

The tremendous success of all of NYF’s programming is due to our team’s keen understanding of the importance of mental health care for childhood trauma survivors. Chhori is a leader in ensuring all of NYF’s physical interventions are strengthened, supported, and sustained by robust mental and emotional care as well.

Sandplay Therapy

Ankur Counseling Center uses many different therapeutic approaches, but sandplay therapy is Chhori’s specialty.

For both adults and children, a common symptom of traumatic stress is an intense struggle to articulate the experience in a way that is organized and linear while also sufficiently capturing the complex layers of distress behind the narrative. This is because part of what makes an experience traumatic is its scale, scope, and impact on so many pieces of an individual’s life. The brain’s inability to untangle and sort this tremendous snarl is itself a major facet of the trauma. This is especially true for children, whose brains are still developing their baseline understanding of the world.

Sandplay therapy bypasses the factual story of the trauma entirely. It instead capitalizes on a child’s natural ways of learning: imagination, creativity, and pretend play. In much the same way healthy children will explore their worlds in miniature by playing house, acting out stories with their toys, or making up elaborate playground games (taking advantage of the options to swap roles, add dramatic surprises, adjust the rules, go back to change the ending, and more), a child grappling with trauma can use play to safely navigate the major sources of distress within their traumatic histories.

How Sandplay Therapy Works

In Chhori’s counseling room, a child is presented with trays of sand and many shelves of miniatures representing all parts of life and fantasy: figures of men, women, children, and babies; superheroes and villains; houses, castles, schools; gods and goddesses; trees, dump trucks, rubber duckies, dinosaurs, frying pans, puppies, and more. The child is invited to gather as many items as he or she wishes, and to create a world within the sand tray.

Chhori watches patiently as the child creates the world, careful not to interrupt the process. Some worlds—often in the beginning of a child’s journey—are highly disorganized, overwhelmed with figures in chaotic relation to one another. Other worlds are quite sparce, with figures appearing far away from one another. Still other worlds reveal consistent themes, like villains lurking in the shadows, families being reunited, or community roles.

When the tray is complete, Chhori asks the child if their creation has a title, or if they’d like to walk her through the world they’ve created. Certain figures clearly have more significance to the child than others—perhaps a specific problem the figure has encountered. Letting the child lead as much as possible, Chhori lets the tray become the subject, with the child explaining about the characters, their relationships to one another, their desires, and their struggles. Discussions emerge naturally from this process, allowing the child to gently explore challenging themes from a safe distance, and as the expert in control of their own created world.

The results are transformative, as children gradually peel through the layers in this safe, affirming environment, gently processing their trauma piece by piece.

And, wonderfully, sandplay therapy is a useful technique for children from virtually any cultural background. It’s especially crucial in a country like Nepal, where children come from many different subcultures.

A Day in the Life

Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan has a very full daily schedule, touching on every NYF program in one way or another.

“Usually, my day starts with providing one-on-one counseling sessions,” she says. Chhori has an average of four individual sessions per day, each lasting 30-50 minutes. Most of her patients are children and youth, including Olgapuri Children’s Village kids, NYF Scholarship recipients, and children referred from other children’s homes or nonprofits working with families in Kathmandu Valley.

Twice a month, she also leads 90-minute group therapy sessions.

After each counseling session, Chhori makes careful session notes to document each patient’s progress. Occasionally, if necessary, she meets with parents or guardians.

Chhori also provides clinical supervision sessions with the rest of the Ankur team (currently six counselors, each with a master’s degree) and mental health professionals from other organizations.

Afternoons are for larger projects. Some days, Chhori leads trainings and workshops for mental health professionals, teachers, parents and guardians, social workers, and other people who work with children and youth.

Innovative Trainings & Workshops

Some of these trainings are for NYF’s teams, while others are specifically for organizations with missions that complement ours. For example, Chhori recently led a several-day workshop for staff members at a Kathmandu Valley women’s shelter which had been struggling with behavior problems from some of the children receiving services there. The training focused on trauma-informed discipline: methods of effectively addressing problematic behaviors in ways that recognize and honor the chaotic, frightening, and painful circumstances these children were responding to. Professionals who received this training responded with glowing appreciation. They have already seen remarkable improvement in their interactions with the children in their care.

Other trainings are part of larger NYF programs. Women in our Olgapuri Vocational School Industrial Tailoring program receive empowerment and goal-setting workshops as part of their curriculum. These students frequently report that these workshops were their favorite part of the training!

And, of course, Peer Counseling training is a major facet of the Caste Equality Project (CEP). Chhori is leading this program, working closely with CEP Coordinator Lalit Gahatraj to ensure our 30 Saptari District peer counselors are supported and empowered in their mission to begin building their community members’ self-confidence, overcoming generational trauma, and daring to seize opportunities to participate fully in Nepali society.

Community Mental Health Program

Mental health problems are very common across Nepal. But unfortunately, awareness of mental health concepts are still very low, even in urban areas. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of mental health crisis spiked. At the same time, Ankur Counseling Center’s reach extended further than ever before.

During NYF’s rapid pivot to lockdown-safe programming, Chhori’s team was the first to introduce remote services. And soon, Ankur Counseling Center had expanded their offerings to include services to local women experiencing domestic violence, support for front-line healthcare workers, and training for other organizations serving women and children.

The COVID lockdowns showed local governments and other changemakers how important mental health care is. In mid-2023, the government of Lalitpur Metropolitan City (the area of Kathmandu Valley where NYF’s offices are) invited Ankur Counseling Center to launch a Community Mental Health Program. Chhori has been leading this important work ever since. So far, she has introduced monthly “Mental Health Desk” activities in local schools, organized World Mental Health Day celebrations, and provided mental health awareness training for students, teachers, healthcare workers, social workers, and traditional healers.

What’s Next?

Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan is involved with many Kathmandu-based organizations focused on mental health. She’s passionate about applying the world’s best understanding of psychology to a Nepali cultural context.

Most psychological care techniques today were developed in Western cultures, which in many ways are very different from Nepal’s society! As a result, some care techniques which are very effective for an American mindset or worldview are not culturally appropriate for Nepali patients. However, Chhori understands the scientific basis for these techniques. She and her network of Nepali psychology experts are deeply interested in studying which of these approaches may have promise in a Nepali context, with a few culturally minded tweaks.

Meanwhile, she says, “Personally, I feel NYF is my second home. My values match with NYF’s values.” Our organization gives her a sense of belonging and of a meaningful life. And because NYF is structured with trust in our on-the-ground experts, Chhori has plenty of opportunities to stretch her expertise as far as she is able.

“Working more than 15 years with children and youth, I have learned that suffering can be reduced or prevented by cultivating compassion,” Chhori says. “I can see the hardships in the community—and opportunities for community transformation.”

NYF is deeply proud of Dr. Chhori Laxmi Maharjan and the work she is doing to advance mental health care in Nepal—especially for children and survivors of trauma.

You are not alone. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis or thoughts of suicide, get help right away. You can contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. For the United States, you may call or text the Suicide Prevention and Crisis Hotline at 988. You can also message the Crisis Text Line by texting “HOME” to 741741 or visiting https://www.crisistextline.org/. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.

Meet the Saptari District Moms helping to launch the Caste Equality Project

In April 2023, Radhika* (29) joined thousands of families who brought children to a Nutrition Outreach Camp in Saptari District. Her children, Kamala* (13), Dinesh* (10), and Sharmila* (7) had never seen a doctor.

Radhika was anxious at first. Members of Dalit castes, historically labeled as “untouchable” across South Asia, still face tremendous systemic discrimination, exploitation, and societal exclusion. Would they be turned away, or ignored, or even threatened or beaten?

She was relieved when the NYF team told her their organization wanted to help as many Dalit families as possible.

Clockwise from top left: Radhika, Kamala, Dinesh, and Sharmila welcome the NRH fieldwork team into their home for a follow-up visit in Sept. 2023.

While the NRH visit significantly improved their nutritional status, systemic challenges related to caste identity have made that progress difficult to maintain back home.

NYF is helping them and other moms in Saptari District overcome these challenges and achieve lasting health. Meanwhile, their feedback is helping us ensure that the Caste Equality Project is as successful as possible.

Then the pediatrician told Radhika that all three kids were malnourished—Dinesh and Sharmila severely so. She felt a jolt of helplessness, and even shame. But NYF’s team immediately invited the whole family to the Kathmandu Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH) for treatment. Radhika was stunned that the three-week stay would be free-of-charge.

At the NRH, Radhika’s kids quickly gained weight and became healthier. And Radhika mastered the nutrition lessons, even encouraging her kids to participate. At discharge, the family was cautiously optimistic about applying everything they’d learned and continuing their progress.

But when the NRH fieldwork team followed up in September 2023, Radhika had run into significant challenges. Dinesh and Sharmila had started growth spurts. Even though they hadn’t lost weight, they were both technically malnourished again. Once more, Radhika felt guilt and overwhelm. But the NYF team reassured her. Her story highlights unique problems facing the Dalit community. Understanding her challenges is helping NYF create solutions.

Six months after Sharmila left the NRH, NYF’s Field Supervisor, Ramesh Pant, weighs her to check progress. The family & field team worked together to create a dry, level surface to do so.

Caste discrimination prevents many Dalit families from building sturdy, permanent homes. As our Educating Dalit Lawyers scholars gain experience, they will help families navigate the legal hurdles standing between them & safe, dignified living spaces.

In the meantime, our team is honored to be invited inside these homes. This simple respect helps strengthen the message that no one is untouchable.

Photo credit: Naresh Tuladhar

Bina* is one of the best-educated people in her village: she completed grade 10 with excellent scores. She brought her sweet one-year-old daughter Padma* to the same camp Radhika’s family attended. Padma was severely malnourished and needed urgent care at the Kathmandu Valley NRH.

While at the NRH, Bina was surprised to learn how cooking methods impact the nutritional value of food. She felt dismayed that in all her efforts in school, no one had ever taught her any of the nutritional information that would have helped her nourish her baby. Now she knew her usual cooking methods often wasted crucial nutrients. She had even been cutting away and discarding the most nutritious bits!

At follow-up in Sept. 2023 (at left), Bina shared that she is applying her updated knowledge every day. Padma’s health is better than ever. Bina’s health is better, too. Vegetables are hard to access in Bina’s village—she has to walk an hour to get to the market. But Padma’s health is worth the trip. Bina has wrapped this errand into her regular routine, and she’s sharing tips with her neighbors, too!

The Caste Equality Project is NYF’s most ambitious initiative yet. We’re vowing to empower Nepal’s Dalit communities
—starting right here in Saptari District.

Saptari District Moms like Radhika are helping shape this project!

An Expanded Mission for the New Life Center

An expanded mission for the New Life Center (NLC) began effective July 2023, thanks to tremendous progress made in Nepal’s fight against pediatric HIV/AIDS!

The New Life Center has become a medical recovery home, not only for children living with HIV, but for kids and expectant mothers visiting Kathmandu for any critical medical treatment or surgery.

We are so grateful that a loving & enthusiastic NYF supporter has fully funded the New Life Center through June 2024! To support health and wellness for Nepali children this year, please consider supporting our Nutritional Rehabilitation Home. This facility, right next door to the New Life Center, serves hundreds of children per year.

Before: Empowering Kids Living with Pediatric HIV

NYF established the New Life Center in 2006 as a specialized care home for children (aged 0-14) living with HIV/AIDS. Our young patients, whose fragile immune systems were already under attack from this aggressive virus, spent time in our care frequently as they grew, receiving special, loving, personalized care from our nursing staff.

Once a child’s immune system finished developing at age 15, our team connected them with their local HIV/AIDS organization for adults. This ensured strong continuity of care. Meanwhile, these local organizations referred families to the NLC whenever they learned of a child living with the virus.

Many of these children have also received NYF scholarship support in grade school and beyond!

Between 2006 and 2023, the NLC became a premier resource in Nepal for families impacted by pediatric HIV. Our team has saved hundreds of lives and empowered their families. Their work has also helped lower both virus transmission and the stigma faced by Nepalis living with this challenging diagnosis.

Nepal has made tremendous progress in slowing the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This has resulted in a reduced need for a specialized facility exclusively for children living with the virus.

Changing Health Needs

In March 2020, NLC patients returned to their home villages to avoid exposure to COVID-19, leaving the NLC almost empty. During the worst of the pandemic, the NLC cared for mild-to-moderate COVID patients who were unable to isolate at home. We offered remote care for our HIV patients, with great success. Thanks to these innovations, in 2022, the NLC received the smallest number of in-person HIV/AIDS patients since opening in 2006. Most beds remained vacant.

NYF spent 2022 and the first half of 2023 engaged in an ambitious HIV/AIDS Awareness & Advocacy Campaign. We proudly partnered with several grassroots organizations in districts with high rates of HIV. These organizations—Makwanpur Women’s Group (Makwanpur District), Bara Plus (Bara and Parsa Districts), and Lumbini Plus (Nawalpur and Parasi Districts)—allowed us to make quick, strong connections with local changemakers and beneficiaries, which maximized our impact. Creating a unified action plan, without interrupting the existing services each organization offered, allowed us all to serve these communities with efficiency and strength. It also created a cohesive, powerful message about HIV/AIDS Awareness & Advocacy.

You can learn more about the original mission of the New Life Center, as well as the HIV/AIDS Awareness & Advocacy Campaign, on our historical New Life Center – HIV/AIDS program page.

Between 2022 and 2023, we printed 14,000 copies of our HIV/AIDS guidebook (view the flipbook here). We originally only planned to print 500, not expecting demand to be so high! Our team distributed copies to families living with HIV, students and their teachers, women’s groups, hospitals, doctors and nurses, organizations intersecting with issues related to HIV, government offices, and community representatives. Access to this information is making tremendous headway in educating the public. NYF will continue distributing this resource as long as demand continues.

NYF has a particularly strong reputation in Nepal, for integrity, longevity, and effectiveness. Partnering NGOs reported that our project led to greater trust from the local governments, schools, and even community members living with HIV. Many of the individuals living with HIV in these areas had already intersected with the NLC, either through their own children or from having been a young NLC patient themselves. NYF’s public trust in smaller local organizations strengthened the impact of these grassroots resources.

Raising the profile of these locally-led organizations has already made their services more effective. We also trained these passionate local teams with learnings from our 17 years of experience.

Now: An Expanded Mission for the NLC

With the need for a specialized pediatric HIV/AIDS facility on the decline and the strengthening of local HIV/AIDS organizations, NYF realized that our beautiful New Life Center could now offer an broader service to the children and families of Nepal.

In 2023, the New Life Center’s mission expanded to include children and families traveling to Kathmandu for all kinds of life-changing medical care, including HIV, but no longer limited to it.

This resource allows children from some of Nepal’s most remote regions to access their right to healthcare.

Most of Nepal’s hospitals—especially those offering specialized treatments—are centralized in Kathmandu. A recent study showed that 57% of Kathmandu patients have traveled for treatment from more rural areas. This is a devastating expense for many families.

The New Life Center empowers children and families to access life-transforming medical care, to heal thoroughly without dangerous complications, and to live full, rich, joyful lives free of the long-lasting burden of crushing medical debt.

Children and their caregivers stay at the New Life Center for an average of 15 days. This is the typical duration required for follow-up and recovery from the acute medical conditions and procedures we typically see. They receive individualized, supportive care free of charge, including monitoring from nurses, nutritious meals created under the recommendation of our dieticians, emergency support and ambulance service where needed, psychological counseling as-needed, and practical, supportive advice from our staff on how to understand and implement their doctors’ discharge instructions at home.

Learn more about this program (and some early impact stories!) on the updated New Life Center – Medical Recovery Home program page.

Dhanyabad!

Thank you for the loving support that has made the New Life Center’s expanded mission possible!

NYF has been an important part of Nepal’s remarkable progress in the fight to end pediatric HIV/AIDS. We’re continuing to put our knowledge and resources to use in supporting individuals and families who are living with this challenging diagnosis. All of this is possible thanks to loving supporters like you.

Now that the New Life Center is serving a wider audience, our impact is expanding more than ever. Thank you for sharing our mission, bringing Health access to children all over Nepal!

Finding hope through NYF’s Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH): Meet Rinof

In 2008, young mom Rijana sat wide-eyed in a Kathmandu hospital, cradling her 10-month-old son Rinof while the doctor gave her a set of seemingly impossible discharge instructions. Her heart sank as she listened.

Rinof had had a terrible infection and had undergone major intestinal surgery. He weighed only 11 pounds (about half the weight of a healthy 10-month-old), and Rijana was incredibly grateful that he had survived the procedure—but for Rinof to be truly healed, he would need a second, more intensive surgery within the next few months.

The surgeons would not risk performing this second operation on a child so small. Somehow, Rijana would need to bring the boy’s weight up to at least 22 pounds, ideally by Rinof’s first birthday. Since the weight gain was not considered a medical matter, the hospital was discharging them, with instructions to return when he was ready for surgery.

Rijana could not imagine how she could accomplish this weight gain—especially with Rinof’s digestive system so fragile that it required surgery.

But then, something truly life-changing happened. As Rijana prepared to leave, she met an NYF staff member. The staff member was arriving with a nutritious meal for another child staying in the hospital. He noticed how frail and weak Rinof was, and how heartbroken Rijana seemed. He quickly told her all about the nearby Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH).

Rijana and Rinof went directly from the hospital to the NRH, where NYF’s loving staff members quickly began developing a special diet for Rinof. “At the NRH, my son got such good treatment that he started gaining weight. I also learned so much about nutrition and how to take care of my malnourished child,” Rijana says now.

“I learned so many things that I never knew. In school health classes, we are taught only theoretical things that we don’t know how to apply in real life. The NRH teaches very vital things with hands-on practice that one can apply in everyday life.”

Over the next 28 days, Rinof steadily gained weight and Rijana absorbed as much information as she could. When Rijana felt confident, she brought Rinof home to continue their progress. She excitedly shared what she had learned with her husband, Naresh. Soon, Rinof’s surgery went forward, with great success.

Today, Rinof is a strapping, vibrant young man, taller than both of his parents, and preparing to enter college.

He recently earned a certification in Computer Applications, and he spends some of his free time volunteering as an art teacher for grades 1-5 at a local school, where he is quite popular.

Top row, left and right: Rinof’s artwork; top row, center: Rinof holding his certificate of excellence in Computer Applications. Bottom row, left: Rinof’s artwork; bottom row, right: Rinof enjoying the outdoors!

“The NRH not only saved my son’s life but also taught me so much,” Rijana says. “Since my time there, I have been involved in a lot of work, mainly to do with women and children. I have worked with mothers’ groups and I have been a member of the municipal committee for child protection. Every time, the first thing I tell people is about nutrition and about the NRH.”

Rijana hopes to share this knowledge with 28 thousand people in the community—one thousand people for each day she and Rinof spent in the Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH).

Rinof’s father, Naresh, also quickly became committed to NYF’s mission. Today, Naresh is the NRH’s on-staff driver, managing both the ambulance and regular transportation for children visiting the hospital. Whenever he has an anxious parent riding along, he shows them photos of Rinof, and tells the story of his son.

Rinof’s success story is one of thousands. And it’s all possible thanks to supporters like you!

• Learn more about NYF’s Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH)
• Watch an NRH transformation story on YouTube

Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home Officially Joins the Nepali Hospital System!

Exciting news! On July 26th, 2022, the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home was formally handed over to the government-run Dadeldhura Hospital in a special ceremony. This marks the successful conclusion of NYF’s work building and launching new Nutritional Rehabilitation Homes—a project that began in 1998.

NYF’s pioneering NRH model has been so successful that it has become a central piece of Nepal’s national work to end childhood malnutrition. Indeed, the government has already built an additional seven facilities throughout the country—with more on the way! Read more about these remarkable facilities here.

About the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home

The Nepali government specifically requested the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home because the children in Dadeldhura District and in multiple adjoining districts were experiencing a very high rate of stunting due to malnutrition. They had identified several of these districts as among the lowest performing in Nepal when looking at rates of stunting, anemia, and low weight in children and mothers of reproductive age.

Mothers in the region were undoubtedly eager to help their babies grow and develop into healthy, active kids and strong, creative young adults. But in many of their households, there’s no room in the budget for empty calories.

Every rupee spent on food is a rupee that can’t be spent on other necessities like rent, medicine, and school. Without access to knowledge about nutrition—what vegetables contain the nutrients kids need and how to combine and prepare foods to maximize nutritional value—mothers can only make their best guesses with the resources they have.

Many of these parents have shared stories of feeling heartache as they watched their children struggling to put on weight in spite of the adults’ best efforts.

Nepal’s government hoped that one of our clinics would provide the medical support and educational resources nearby communities needed to begin reversing this trend.

This 10-bed facility (enough for 10 mother-child pairs) would be NYF’s final NRH construction project—the 17^th such clinic we had built. We completed construction in August 2017 and started operating on September 1^st of that same year.

Achievements at the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home

In the five years since this clinic opened its doors, nine specially trained staff members have made the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home a pride of the associated hospital. Here are some of their achievements:

• They provided residential treatment and care for 477 children—including diet therapy, 24-hour nursing care, medical check-ups by a pediatrician, and careful monitoring. During these stays, their caregivers, usually mothers, received hands-on training on practical nutrition education and personalized counseling on how to maximize the nutrition in their home diets using only the ingredients available to them.

• They’ve conducted nutritional screenings (and provided personalized nutritional counseling for moms!) for 2,266 children who were visiting the Dadeldhura Hospital for other ailments when malnutrition was a contributing factor.

• Despite not having a designated field staff, NRH staff managed to conduct 56 home visits to follow-up with discharged children who had been severely malnourished enough that their cases required prolonged monitoring.

• They provided community outreach and educational events for their surrounding communities whenever it was necessary, including Breastfeeding Week, Iodine Month, and Nutrition Week.

During the COVID pandemic:

• During COVID-19, They conducted an additional 113 follow-up visits over the phone, coaching caregivers on practical nutrition tips, home hygiene, and child health care at home.

Trainings and Assessments

Staff members have been eager to continue learning to best serve their young patients. Not only have they all participated in annual “refresher” training through NYF’s Kathmandu Valley flagship NRH, but they’ve also made efforts to specialize by attending trainings held by the Nepali Ministry of Health. Several nurses have also attended a maternal and young infant child nutrition workshop. Others have participated in trainings focused on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Most recently, a nurse attended a 5-day workshop on “Nutrition in Emergencies,” focused on learnings from the COVID pandemic.

In 2021, a government team conducted an assessment on the full Dadeldhura Hospital. The NRH scored highest among all the clinical settings associated with the hospital.

This incredible work will continue, with NYF still providing follow-up training for NRH staff members across the country. This includes those providing transformative services in Dadeldhura. In fact, we’re providing training for NRH staff members at facilities built entirely by the Nepali government! This training takes place at our flagship Kathmandu Valley NRH, led by our incredible Nutrition Coordinator, Sunita Rimal.

New Opportunities in Childhood Nutrition

Nepal, NYF, and other organizations working to combat childhood malnutrition have made tremendous strides over the 24 years since we first began providing holistic nutritional care. But the work isn’t finished.

At NYF, we strive to design programs that can one day be sustainably taken over by the communities they are serving. This keeps us at the forefront of social innovation in Nepal—focusing our attention on developing new, focused, daring programs that respond to the toughest challenges.

With the Nepali government now building and operating NRHs on its own, NYF’s nutrition team sees new opportunities to conduct life-saving Nutrition Outreach Camps in more and more remote regions of the country.

As Nepal works to improve its nationwide infrastructure, it must contend with its unique, dramatic geography. Sharp elevation shifts throughout the country make building and maintaining roads and bridges incredibly difficult. As a result, many villages are still only accessible on foot. Historically, we’ve struggled to persuade some parents to bring their severely-malnourished children to the nearest NRH, as the journey to the closest one was often several days long and potentially dangerous.

Now when we find children in these areas in need of immediate medical care, there’s an NRH within much closer reach than there has ever been before. That makes it so much easier to save more lives and introduce nutritional education to eager communities.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for being part of this journey. We are so grateful to everyone who has helped make this chapter of NYF’s journey such a transformative success—not only for the individual children we’ve nourished, but for the country as a whole.

Donate Today

As Nepal recovers from the COVID pandemic and finds a “new normal”, NYF is hard at work launching new initiatives, keeping our promises to those already in our care, and integrating new learnings from the past two years. Please help us continue to grow our impact by making a generous gift today right here on our website!

NYF’s COVID-19 Timeline

A brief overview of COVID-19 in Nepal; and NYF’s strong responses to it.

This timeline regarding NYF’s COVID response is a developing piece. Last updated: 3/11/2022

On March 11, 2020, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Not too long after, on April 4th, 2020, Nepal confirmed its first locally-transmitted case of COVID-19. Since then, NYF has launched five emergency programs in response to the pandemic (Community Nutrition Kitchens, The Emergency Lifeline Halfway Home, Access to Education, Lito for Life, and our very own COVID Isolation Center).

Thanks to our dedicated team in Nepal and loving support from the wider NYF community, these programs have been an incredible success. Chiri Babu Maharjan, Mayor of Lalitpur Metropolitan City, has commended NYF “for its outstanding services since the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal, and for the well-facilitated quarantine and COVID Isolation Center in partnership with Lalitpur.”

NYF’s swift and effective response to the deadly surge of the Delta variant in April 2021 has also been highlighted by BBC News.

NYF remains incredibly grateful for our community of supporters, and for our amazing team in Nepal. Thank you all for being so patient, supportive, and generous during these challenging times. Whether you joined us recently or have been here with us since the beginning of this pandemic: Dhanyabad.

Please scroll down to view NYF’s pandemic timeline.

World Youth Skills Day: Celebrating NYF Breakthroughs During COVID

The United Nations General Assembly declared World Youth Skills Day in 2014. Each July 15^th since then marks an opportunity to “celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.”

COVID-19 has hit the world economy hard. But many are surprised to learn that globally, young people aged 15-24 have been impacted more severely than any other group when it comes to employment. World employment for all adults fell 3.7 percent in 2020. For young adults, the rate was 8.7 percent.

Young women have been hit even harder than young men.

Empowering young adults with strong paths to employment will be critical to the global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true in Nepal, where extremely low pre-pandemic employment levels were already hindering economic growth and opportunity for young people.

The UN is urging countries to invest more in job-readiness education for young people. This applies not only to traditional academic education, but to vocational education, skills training, career counseling, and other paths towards independence and economic empowerment.

This World Youth Skills Day, NYF is highlighting our work in Vocational Education and Career Counseling—including high-impact programs like Olgapuri Vocational School, Vocational Diploma Scholarships, and our new SAAET (Sustainable Agricultural and Entrepreneur Training) program!

Vocational Education and Career Counseling

Many young people in Nepal are unable to complete their grade school education. Whether due to personal aptitude, economic barriers, inaccessibility, trauma, or other factors, the academic path towards success is sometimes not possible.

The demand in Nepal is high for skilled work. Especially since the 2015 earthquake, many career opportunities exist for welders, electricians, carpenters, woodworkers, and plumbers. During normal years, tourism is also an industry offering strong careers in restaurants and hotels. These careers pay much more than the backbreaking daily labor many Nepalese young people find themselves taking—the labor many of them watched their parents perform for decades while never being able to build wealth and prosperity.

However, though the demand is high for these skills, Nepalese companies often struggle to find qualified, trained local young people. As a result, workers from India and other countries fill so many of these high-paying positions.

Meanwhile, young Nepalese men and women can often only find job prospects beyond their country’s borders and far from family, where language barriers and other factors make them vulnerable to exploitation. These overseas positions separate families for months on end and provide workers with barely enough money to get by.

Even for more traditional Nepalese paths, like those in agriculture, valuable modern innovations exist that can raise crop yields and strengthen individual efficiency. But individuals must learn these innovations, and many in Nepal’s rural farming communities have limited access to this information.

In recent years, NYF has been working to expand access to career opportunities for Nepal’s young people.

Our Vocational Education and Career Counseling program provides young men and women with incredible opportunities. Those in our programs receive intensive skills training from expert instructors, entrepreneurship guidance, small business admin and accounting lessons, resume-building and job search support, start-up microgrants, and connections to other young adults on similar paths towards personal economic empowerment.

Olgapuri Vocational School

Olgapuri Vocational School (OVS), located on the Olgapuri campus in Kathmandu Valley, brings 20-student classes of men and women together for 3-month certification programs in electrical, plumbing, carpentry, welding, and more. Programs shift to match needs NYF has identified through contacts at major Nepalese companies. We also offer specialized courses in fields like industrial tailoring or special agricultural topics including unique crops (like mushrooms or henna) and innovations (including greenhouse technology).

In normal years, around 90 percent of OVS graduates are employed in their chosen fields within six months.

During most of the pandemic, students have been unable to come to OVS due to travel and safety restrictions. Instead, we have begun taking OVS to rural communities as we launched our Satellite Olgapuri Vocational School program.

Instead of bringing individuals from multiple villages to Olgapuri Vocational School, we sent our trainers—fully equipped with the necessary tools and equipment—out to quarantine in individual villages, conducting the training there before moving to another village.

Soon after launching, municipality offices and schools began reaching out to request these satellite trainings. Requests arrived from all over: including a girl’s school, a children’s home, and an addiction recovery center for young adults.

In the final half of 2020, we were able to conduct Satellite Vocational Training courses in nine villages.

A total of 255 students received a full course of training in electrical, plumbing, carpentry, or welding by the end of 2020. Of these, 77 were young women—a higher rate of interest than we usually see. NYF believes this is because the satellite version allowed students to study their new skills without leaving their home villages. This insight is informing the development of new vocational education programming especially for young women.

Empowering Freed Kamlaris

Young Tharu women associated with our Empowering Freed Kamlaris program are still eligible for special skills-based trainings held in their native Terai region of Nepal. Most of these women join our “Tea and Snacks Shop” training program, which teaches the principles of small business ownership and provides start-up funds for each woman to open her own roadside business. Graduates of this program have used their proceeds to buy livestock, to purchase farmland outright, or to educate their younger siblings. Some have even hired their parents or husbands to run secondary locations! In 2020, even through the pandemic, 334 Freed Kamlaris received skills-based training.

Vocational Diplomas

Finally, young people may receive NYF scholarships for earning Vocational Diplomas at long-term technical institutions. Careers may include nursing, engineering, agriculture, the culinary arts, and hotel management. During our 2019-2020 year, 54 students received vocational scholarships, with 9 individuals graduating.

SAAET (Sustainable Agricultural and Entrepreneur Training)

Saaet means “an auspicious moment of starting a new journey”.

As part of NYF’s commitment to helping young Nepalese women build personal economic prosperity and to provide an alternative to child marriage in rural communities, we introduced a new vocational education project in 2021. Called the SAAET Project, or Sustainable Agricultural and Entrepreneurship Training, this satellite-type vocational education program teaches young women how to build and maintain greenhouses, use best organic farming practices within them, and to run a greenhouse-based business.

The program launched on March 22nd with 21 young women (all of them Freed Kamlaris) in the first round. These women learned modern, sustainable methods for producing increased vegetable yields with smaller spaces and reduced labor—and many of them have already built their own greenhouses and planted their first crops. They are looking forward to sharing what they’ve learned with their friends and neighbors!

Visit https://nepalyouthfoundation.org/saaet-project-intro/ for more information!

Frontline Warrior: NYF’s Lila Tharu Celebrates Freedom Day by Saving Lives

Frontline warrior healthcare workers across the world have spent nearly 18 months battling COVID-19 to defend their communities. These heroes have saved countless lives during the pandemic.

For one of these warriors, Lila Tharu, age 26 (below), her status as a nurse and midwife is a source of particular satisfaction. NYF is proud to count Lila among our many accomplished alumni now to heal their communities during this crisis.

Kamlari Freedom Day

June 27^th, 2021 marks the 8^th anniversary of the legal abolition of the kamlari practice in Nepal—otherwise known as Kamlari Freedom Day.

Kamlari was a form of indentured servitude which exploited the daughters of the Tharu ethnic minority group in Western Nepal’s Terai region. After generations of predatory lending by more powerful “land-owning” groups, the practice emerged as the only way for families to pay back exorbitant generational debts.

At every Tharu New Year, parents sold their daughters—some as young as six years old—to work long hours in the homes of strangers. In return, families would receive an average of only $30 for an entire year of their child’s labor. Thousands of Tharu girls spent their entire childhoods in kitchen slavery. Some never returned home.

To people in the Western Terai, the kamlari practice had come to seem inevitable. It was a baked-in cultural truth that very few people dared to question.

Lila Tharu – Kamlari Life, Rescue & Education

Lila was born in Thakurbaba Municipality in Bardiya District. When she was 12, Lila was sent away to work as a kamlari in 2005. Her two older sisters had also worked as kamlaris.

After two years working in her master’s house and being denied an education, Lila was identified and rescued by Nepal Youth Foundation in 2007. Through the Indentured Daughters program, her family was provided with economic support to offset Lila’s lost “wage.” It also included the materials needed to allow Lila to return to school: a kerosene lamp to study by, a school uniform, notebooks, and more.

Lila was a determined student who dreamed of becoming a midwife. Soon after her rescue, she enrolled in grade 7 at a local school. She completed high school (10^th grade at the time in Nepal) in 2012, passing her country’s notorious SLC “Iron Gate” exam. Lila earned a place in the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife program at Sushma Koirala Memorial Institute in Nepalgunj. NYF provided her with a college scholarship throughout her studies.

NYF continued to provide career support as Lila began her nursing career in a private hospital in Banke District. And in November 2016, she finally landed her dream job as an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife at Bheri Hospital in Nepalgunj, the largest government hospital in the region. She has remained there ever since, continuing her education by taking Nursing Care and Skilled Birth Attendant trainings to further enhance her skills.

The salary she brings home each month is far beyond what members of the Tharu community thought possible for one of their daughters only 10 to 20 years ago. Not only is Lila serving a critical role in her community’s health system—she is proving the incredible potential within a Tharu girl.

Lila Tharu – Frontline Warrior

At the beginning of 2020, Lila was living at home with her mother while continuing her career. Lila’s father had passed away years before, and her two sisters were now married.

Things changed in Lila’s work life when the pandemic hit. She was added to a special COVID treatment team early on and assigned temporarily to nearby Sushil Koirala Cancer Hospital in Khajura. This hospital had been set aside especially for COVID patients. Lila worked there for several weeks during the pandemic’s first wave. She also served COVID patients in mandated isolation in a Kalpatri hotel during this time.

Now, during Nepal’s intense second COVID wave, Lila’s hospital in Nepalgunj is at the epicenter of the crisis. Many young people from Western Nepal cross the border into India to find work. When the virus surged in India earlier this year, they fled back north to escape the pandemic—not realizing they were bringing the virus home with them.

Bheri Hospital now has four dedicated COVID wards. Lila (below, in white at far right), who has valuable COVID Care experience from 2020, is a frontline warrior in one of them.

She is hard at work monitoring her patients’ vital signs, measuring oxygen levels, and providing intravenous therapy and medicine, as well as other critical care. COVID death rates for hospitalized patients are frighteningly high everywhere, and Lila’s ward is no different. During this second surge, they have lost an average of 3-4 patients per day. But Lila tries to remember the lives she has helped to save as well. Many of her surviving patients would not be able to return home if not for her.

In spite of rigorous safety protocols, Lila herself caught COVID in the spring, like many other frontline warriors across the world. Fortunately, her symptoms were mild. After a short isolation, she returned courageously to the COVID ward to continue her lifesaving work.

She will continue this work until her expertise is no longer required in the COVID ward. She (below, preparing medicines for a patient) is proud to be doing this important work in her community—and grateful to the NYF Community for making her journey possible.

Just One Story of Thousands

Lila says she was afraid when the virus first arrived in Nepal. But now, she is extremely dedicated to the community she serves. Her courage is nothing new to NYF.

Like the other Freed Kamlari women, Lila had already experienced intense hardship and taken many daring steps before COVID arrived. Together, while most of them were still children, these girls dared to challenge their communities, abandon their masters, question their culture, and declare their own worth. Many of them returned home to families who resented them for taking such bold steps. Others were injured while marching for kamlari freedom, as police objected to the girls’ protests against the government.

Lila is one of thousands of Freed Kamlari who refused to stop simply at being rescued from an exploitative practice.

She and so many others have claimed their personal power by seizing educational opportunities and chasing their dreams – and working to lift their sisters and daughters in the process. Some are becoming lawyers, determined to defend human rights. Others have become small business owners or specialized farmers, gradually building personal and generational wealth in ways their parents could not.

And some, like Lila Tharu, dreamed of helping others in the healthcare field. They’ve grown up to be frontline warriors in a global crisis they never imagined.

Happy Kamlari Freedom Day, Lila!

Happy Freedom Day to ALL of the Freed Kamlaris
and to the young girls and women who will never be bonded away!

And Happy Freedom Day to the NYF Community—to everyone who helped support this incredible program. Lila’s story, and so many others like it, are proof of the amazing way your #LoveWorks.

Celebrate with NYF today.

To help celebrate this joyous occasion and support the education of brave young women like Lila, please make a thoughtful gift for NYF Scholarships or our Vocational Education program on our donation page. Additionally, join the NYF Community by signing up to receive emails here.

Nepal’s Second COVID Surge Continues – New Updates from Som

Nepal’s second surge of COVID-19 seems to have calmed, but the danger has not passed. This week, NYF president Som Paneru has given the US team an update from his vantage point on the ground in Nepal. (Below, Nutritional Rehabilitation Center staff members arrange precious oxygen cylinders for use in the COVID Isolation Center.)

For details about the impact this most recent crisis has had on our work providing Health, Shelter, Freedom, and Education, please click here. Thanks to the dedicated and compassionate team in Nepal, the children in NYF’s care remain safe and healthy!

COVID in Nepal – the Second Surge

Som’s description of Nepal’s lockdown is intense: essential food outlets are only open for a couple of hours each morning, with the remaining businesses completely closed down to slow the spread. Transportation, both public and private, is halted. Only vehicles for essential services are allowed in the street.

Domestic flights are completely grounded, and only four airlines are allowed to operate international flights. Even these occur only once a week. The passengers are very carefully selected and are either Nepalese citizens returning home or aid workers. Chartered flights arrive periodically, bringing relief materials.

The infection rate is beginning to drop, as is the reported death toll. Som reports that the hospitals are less overwhelmed, and for the moment, there seem to be enough hospital beds for the current patients. (Above, Som and the Nutritional Rehabilitation Home team meet outside to receive up-to-date information.)

However, different from last year, the virus has now reached into very rural areas. Here, people do not have access to COVID tests, and they often do not go to hospitals, making accurate tracking and reporting impossible. Some hospitals in Western Nepal, the epicenter of the current surge, report that they are seeing fewer people arrive – but those who do are arriving from very rural areas, and in critical condition.

These new developments will impact NYF’s planning and programming as we proceed into the coming months.

And of course, the halting of economic activities during this extended lockdown is once again worsening human suffering. Families are struggling to make ends meet, hunger is on the rise, and individuals with chronic medical conditions are unable to access care.

But the vaccine situation in Nepal is dire. At the beginning of 2021, vaccine donations arrived from China and India – but future vaccines promised by India never arrived, leaving many people throughout Nepal only partially vaccinated with the first dose of AstraZeneca. Another one million doses have arrived from China, with more donations pending from the UK, Denmark, and the United States, but distribution will be challenging in the midst of this surge. Rural populations will be especially difficult to reach. (When vaccines first arrived in Nepal, front line workers were prioritized, so NYF staff members working with COVID patients have received their vaccines.)

Time to Prepare

Public health officials are predicting a third wave in the fall, with children likely to be impacted more than in the past two surges. The Nepalese government has already warned hospitals, urging them to prepare pediatric ICUs. Ideally, hospitals will prepare at least 25% of their existing ICU beds to suit children.

NYF is taking this warning seriously, planning ahead using lessons learned during this second surge.

Especially in Nepal’s urban areas, family homes are often quite cramped, with multiple family members sharing a single bed, and multiple family branches sharing a single residence. In late April, COVID-19 had already reached Nepal from India before the country locked down. This trapped many families in very close quarters with at least one person who was already infected with the virus – and with not enough room for social distancing.

Our COVID Isolation Center (split between our flagship Nutritional Rehabilitation Home, at left in the photo above, and the New Life Center, right) played an important role in slowing the spread in Lalitpur, just outside Kathmandu. But we hope to be prepared to do more during the predicted third surge. Som is working in close contact with local health officials to identify ways we can help lower the risks to families in lockdown and save as many lives as possible.

Emergency Nutritional Care

In response to the devastating economic effects of the virus and the extended lockdowns, NYF has expanded our emergency food distribution efforts. We are continuing to run Lito for Life, and we have added food staples like potatoes and other vegetables to our deliveries.

COVID Isolation Center

As COVID-19 tore through Nepal’s cities in April and May, hospitals were quickly overwhelmed. Individuals testing positive for the virus were encouraged to isolate at home unless their symptoms became life-threatening.

This approach posed two problems: first, those living in cramped quarters were unable to truly isolate away from their families, and two, many individuals with COVID-19 are unaware of what “life-threatening” symptoms look like. As a result, many people in self-isolation arrived at the hospital too late, and many others unwittingly spread the virus to their loved ones.

Our COVID Isolation Center (in the empty Kathmandu Nutritional Rehabilitation Home and New Life Center) provides a 50-bed space for individuals with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic, or are experiencing mild to moderate symptoms. If symptoms become dangerous, our trained nurses recognize the warning signs right away, and NYF provides a free ambulance ride to the hospital.

In a video made in May, Sajani Amatya shares NYF’s gratitude for all those who helped make this swift response possible:

A four-bed High Dependency Unit (HDU) was added as well, providing semi-ICU care to any patients needing to be transferred to a hospital, but for whom a hospital bed had not yet been found. This has been a great life saving addition. Since opening at the end of May, nine patients have received HDU care before being transferred to the hospital.

Most of our patients are under age 18. So far, we have admitted a total of 151 patients, and 115 of them have been discharged after recovering safely. Nineteen individuals have been referred to the hospital, and 17 patients are currently at the center.

The COVID Isolation Center has also received praise from the National Human Rights Commission, the Women’s Right Commission, the District Administration Office of Lalitpur, and even the WHO.

Unrestricted Support

In times like these, even if COVID has provided the inspiration for your gift, the most effective way to give is to provide unrestricted funding. Unrestricted funding allows us to aim each dollar with the maximum flexibility, allowing the needs on the ground to drive our responses as the situation evolves. Unrestricted funding also allows us to continue keeping our promises to the children in our care by ensuring that each of our programs is fully funded and can continue as best as possible throughout the pandemic – and beyond.

To make your generous gift, please click here. Thank you so much for ensuring your #LoveWorks for the children of Nepal!