We will continue the Lito for Life program until this nutritional support is no longer needed in hard-hit communities. But except for Olgapuri Vocational School (which will require extra safety measures), all of our programs have cautiously resumed operations!

Thank you to the NYF community for making all of this possible, and for supporting our work during these difficult times. Dhanyabad!

NYF’s Ongoing COVID Response: We’ve Launched 50 Access to Education Centers!

Access to Education is officially NYF’s largest COVID response program yet!

An Update from NYF President Som Paneru

Dear Friends,

When we piloted the Access to Education program in August, with only four satellite learning centers, we knew we would need to move quickly to keep students in rural Nepal from falling too far behind their peers in digitally-connected regions.

I am proud to announce that as of early October 2020, an additional 46 Access to Education Centers have been established in two rural municipalities in Dhading District: Netrawati Dabjong and Khaniyabas!

With an average of 100 students per satellite center, we’re currently providing 5,000 K-10 students with educational opportunities they haven’t had in six months! Partnering with public schools, this program is also mobilizing 354 teachers who are already on the Nepalese government’s payroll.

Materials provided for each satellite center include a laptop preloaded with teaching materials linked to Nepal’s country-wide curriculum for each grade, a widescreen television, teacher training sessions, a white board, and reference books.

Classes are held in a building large enough for the village’s children: a women’s group meeting hall, a local health post, even an empty cow shed, if necessary.

And the Access to Education Centers with satellite are quick to establish. The materials provided to the teachers match their regular curriculum. Technical training is provided by NYF when materials are distributed. Once a teacher has returned to their village, they can begin teaching right away.

We hope to continue scaling Access to Education throughout the pandemic. We’re already working on expanding into Gorkha District’s Gandaki Rural Municipality.

Shankar Gurung, a teacher, tells us, “The students are excited to come. The resources provided by NYF have been so helpful and the students are enjoying learning from this new technique.”

The teachers are excited, too. Nepal’s rural schools haven’t yet gained access to digital technology—until now. As we trained the latest batch of teachers, we met many, like Ram*, right, who had never worked with a computer before. He was delighted to see the familiar curriculum appear on the screen during his training and was relieved to learn how user-friendly the device was. NYF has assured him that we’re only a phone call away if he needs any troubleshooting support.

Packing his new materials up, porter-style, Ram told us he’d traveled two hours on foot from his village to meet us at the school building—the same walk his students used to take every day.

He is thrilled to have a way to get back into the classroom, bringing critical opportunities back into the lives of students he has dedicated his career to educating.

As a former teacher myself, I understand his excitement. Having the resources to bring good-quality education to your community is a precious thing. Knowing the children in your care can keep learning, even during a pandemic, is an incredible relief. It’s something none of these teachers take for granted.

Many of the villages we are serving are very remote—days away from the nearest towns on foot. Even in the best of times, children experiencing poverty drop out of school to contribute to their family expenses through cheap labor, and instances of early marriage are very common for young girls especially.

These learning centers have been critical in helping keep these children in school and minimizing dropouts.

Thank you to each member of the NYF Family who has lovingly supported Access to Education so far!

As COVID-19 continues to surge in Kathmandu Valley, we are uncertain how long school closures will last.

Fortunately, the travel restrictions have protected many of these more rural communities. Children from within a single village must still wear masks, just in case, but among members of their own remote community, they have very limited opportunities for exposure to COVID-19.

We’ve built momentum with this incredible program, and we’re hoping to grow as much as we can in the coming months.

Each learning center in our Access to Education program costs $1,000 to establish and can serve 100 students or more. Please help us provide these vital opportunities to children in rural Nepal by making your loving donation here.

Dhanyabad,
Som Paneru, President

*Names have been changed to protect privacy

Credit card donations via our website are still being processed without delay, as are direct bank transfers (EFTs). If you mail a check to our office (1016 Lincoln Blvd #222, San Francisco, CA 94129) please know that we continue to check the mail twice per week, so there will be a delay in our thank you letter being mailed to you.

If you need to reach us, staff are monitoring individual emails and the email address Info@NepalYouthFoundation.org daily. You can also call us at 415-331-8585 and leave a message, as staff will be periodically be calling in to check voicemail.

Former Kamlari Girls, Now Fight COVID-19 in Nepal

Former Kamlari girls and women help fight Covid-19 in Nepal. NYF is so proud these women are helping with this international crisis.

During COVID-19, in the Freed Kamlari Development Forum’s first months of independence from Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), the Tharu community in western Nepal has faced new challenges. Because all Tharu communities live along the Nepal-India border, many young Tharu people support their families through work in Indian agricultural or factory jobs. When the pandemic began, these young people were sent away without work, and those without their own farmland have been unable to provide for themselves in the months since. Many small business owners in the region have had to shutter their stalls and workshops to comply with social distancing requirements. The economic impacts of ongoing border closures and travel restrictions threaten to harm the health and education of each family.

Fortunately, with their home-grown NGO established in the area, these communities have been surviving the pandemic together. 

Early in the lockdown, the FKDF and our Ankur Counseling Center coordinated to mobilize the trained peer counselors within the Freed Kamlari community. These women were able to reach out by phone to individuals in their villages, providing emotional support and problem-solving guidance wherever possible. 

Through their 47 locally operated co-ops, savings groups, and self-help groups, the FKDF has also been able to provide emergency financial relief to families. Twenty years ago, the kamlari practice seemed like the only way for families to pay back the predatory debts accrued in times like these, and sky-high interest rates made those debts nearly impossible to overcome. Agricultural co-ops and financial savings groups run by the community ensure such a thing can never happen again. Now, the Tharu people can provide each other with timely support and manageable interest rates designed to promote financial success in their communities.

Finally, the FKDF is leveraging its strong network of local government partnerships. Due to the incredible work they have already done, and to their connection with NYF, the FKDF is able to coordinate with local- and district-level government bodies to run community awareness programs against COVID-19. They’re hard at work keeping their families, villages, and futures safe.

That’s a special kind of freedom.

NYF is so proud of the work these women are doing during this international crisis. We are proud of the confident and capable leaders they have become. Thank you to each and every one of the NYF supporters who have invested in these incredible women over the past 20 years! Your loving gifts—whether funding piglets in the early days, sponsoring individual educational goals, contributing start-up funds for one of the locally-led co-ops, providing vocational training to hard-working entrepreneurs, or spreading the word within your own communities—have given these communities the ability to meet an unprecedented crisis with amazing resilience.

Dhanyabad! Thank you for your belief in the worth of these girls. The FKDF is proof that your #LoveWorks.

To continue supporting girls freed from kamlari bondage as they establish their own small businesses, you may do so through gifts to our Vocational Education and Career Counseling program. If you’d like to help us prevent early marriage during the COVID crisis, please consider a gift towards Access to Education. Donate here!

NYF’s Ongoing COVID Response: Access to Education

In February 2020, Maya*, an 18-year-old in Dhading District, was excitedly preparing to become the first person in her family to attend college. The oldest of four siblings, three girls and one boy, Maya had worked hard in her studies—often in the face of extreme prejudice—to complete the 12^th grade with good marks. Graduation was an exhilarating achievement.

And college promised to open doors to further possibilities.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of these milestones in Maya’s life. Maya and her family were born into the Dalit caste—a minority group in Nepal and India who have historically been considered impure or “untouchable” by those of higher status. This tradition translates into widespread discrimination across all facets of life: education, healthcare, law enforcement, crime, housing, political power, occupational opportunities, and more.

Despite all this, as well as the compounding challenges faced by young women in her community, Maya had completed high school! So, in February 2020, Maya’s hopes were high, and her future looked bright. Her parents, wage laborers carrying bricks and concrete at construction sites, had been successful enough since 2015 to send all four of their children to school.

But in March, when Nepal locked down against the COVID-19 pandemic, construction abruptly halted—and everything changed.

Within a short time, Maya’s family ran out of money for rent and food, and it seemed the only thing to do was to marry Maya off to someone who could feed her. The marriage was held dizzyingly fast, without Maya’s consent—and immediately, she discovered her new husband was both abusive and an alcoholic. Thankfully, Maya realized quickly that her situation was unsafe, and she left to return to her family.

Maya hopes college is still a possibility for her, as well as for her siblings. But with COVID-19 spreading widely throughout Nepal, and with the family struggling to stay housed and fed, all her dreams are in jeopardy. She fears she is forgetting the material she learned last year and will be unprepared for college when schools reopen.

Students throughout Nepal, especially those already facing discrimination and systemic disadvantages, are facing the terrible prospect of losing the educational opportunities they have worked so hard to achieve. Young women are at an especially high risk of early marriage.

As the lockdown continues, Nepalese students at all grade levels—from kindergarten through university—are falling behind. In urban areas, online classes from top-tier schools are running effectively, but these are only accessible by a few. The “digital divide” is widening between students with access to virtual classrooms and those without. This effect threatens to discourage families from sending their children back to school when the crisis has passed—which in turn will limit each child’s future opportunities.

NYF’s earliest programs were designed to help provide a good education for children in Nepal, and we are still committed to that mission. That’s why we’ve launched Access to Education, an innovative program that confronts the current crisis through village-based “satellite learning centers.”

Access to Education equips local teachers with laptops preloaded with digitized government curriculum’s, a wide screen television, and teaching materials. Instructors are trained in Multi-Grade Teaching and Team-Teaching approaches using the available technology and students are provided with Education Kits containing related materials. Available learning spaces are identified in each village—meeting halls, local health posts, even cow sheds, if necessary—to ensure students can learn with enough room between them for social distancing. In this way, students of all grades attend classes in shifts, keeping up with their curriculum and ensuring their minds remain fresh and agile.

Lopika*, age 15, told us, “Schools have been closed for 4 months already and I had forgotten everything. Now I am so happy to be attending classes in the learning center. The teachers are helping me a lot.” Her friend Gavya* added, “I wish I could learn like this even after the pandemic!”

A recent Nepalese television report commended the new program’s success, observing that besides helping students learn, the satellite centers were “creative opportunities for students to interact with friends and teachers, minimizing the psychological distress” from the pandemic. (Full video report)

Each satellite center costs $1,000 to establish and can handle over 100 students! NYF has already been approached by mayors in many rural municipalities hoping to join the program. We hope to open 46 new centers within the next month.

Our earliest sites in Dhading District have received enthusiastic support from parents, teachers, and students alike—and now, NYF needs your help to expand our reach! To join us in supporting the future of more smart young women like Maya, click here to donate now.

*Names changed to protect privacy.

Credit card donations via our website are still being processed without delay, as are direct bank transfers (EFTs). If you mail a check to our office (1016 Lincoln Blvd., Suite 222, San Francisco, CA 94129), please know that we continue to check the mail twice per week, so there will be a delay in our thank you letter being mailed to you.

If you need to reach us, staff are monitoring individual emails and the email address Info@NepalYouthFoundation.org daily. You can also call us at 415-331-8585 and leave a message, as staff will be periodically be calling in to check voicemail.

Lito for Life: NYF’s 3rd COVID Response Program for Nepal

Lito for Life is the the third Covid response program recently launched by Nepal Youth Foundation. Lito is a nutritious ‘super flour’.

As the COVID-19 crisis progresses in Nepal, the economic impacts on individual families are intensifying. Over half of Nepal’s population relies on wages earned day-to-day or week-to-week for labor done outside of social distanced environments, either in Nepal or abroad. The countrywide lockdown, border closures, global recession, and uncertainty about the future are hitting these workers and their families especially hard.

For the months since the lockdown began, these individuals have not been able to work. Forced into tough decisions between rent and food, many parents are going hungry to feed their children. Applications at local municipal offices for food relief are coming from construction and industry workers, daily laborers, employees and owners of small private businesses, and many more, all of whom have been unable to earn wages since March—and the lists are growing by the week. The longer these families are forced to tighten their belts, the higher their risk of malnutrition.

NYF is proud to be part of the Lito for Life response to this crisis. In addition to our new Community Nutrition Kitchens and Emergency Halfway Home for Women, we have now launched a third COVID Response program: Lito for Life.

Meet Radhika, an NYF staff member who is accustomed to manufacturing Lito (or “super flour”) for our regular nutrition programming. The nutrient-rich staple is a critical menu item at our Nutrition Rehabilitation Homes and is distributed to families with children under age 5 at our remote Nutrition Outreach Camps.

Now, Radhika and her teammates are preparing and packaging Lito for a broader use: keeping urban families nourished through the pandemic’s hunger crisis.

Lito is made of roasted and ground corn, wheat, and soybeans, and contains all the nutrients necessary to sustain good health in adults and children alike. Simple to prepare with hot water (or milk, if available) and tasty enough to be accepted and enjoyed by very young children, each 1-kg packet (2.2 lbs) can provide two days of nutrition to a family of four or five. And, if desired, Lito is easily supplemented with other sparing ingredients a family might have on-hand: oil, onions, or spices.

Each packet costs approximately $2 to prepare, including materials, prep, packaging, staff time, and distribution. That means that a gift of $6 can keep an entire family safe from malnutrition for over one week!

Radhika and her teammates have already prepared over 2,000 kilos (4,409 lbs.) of Lito! NYF is working directly with local municipal offices to identify Kathmandu Valley families reaching out for assistance. Each week, we will provide these families with three packets of Lito, ensuring they can maintain basic levels of nutrition at home throughout the crisis.

I wish I knew when Nepal will be able to reopen safely—but I do know that this intervention will keep families strong and healthy, so when the pandemic is over, they can reenter the recovering economy from a place of strength and resilience. That knowledge is comforting in this time of so much turmoil.

In the meantime, Radhika’s #LoveWorks, one packet of Lito at a time. She and I have seen the incredible difference this mindfully produced “super flour” makes in the lives of parents working towards better health for their children, and we know what each packet can accomplish in each household. Radhika and her team are doing important work with each batch of Lito produced.

But she needs your help to keep the work going. Each thoughtful gift of $6 protects an entire family’s nutritional health for one week; $24 accomplishes the same thing for a month. Imagine how much a healthy community of one hundred families can accomplish together. Please help us put the NYF Family’s tradition of love to work today by making your thoughtful online donation here.

Dhanyabad,
Som Paneru, President

Credit card donations via our website are still being processed without delay, as are direct bank transfers (EFTs). If you mail a check to our office (3030 Bridgeway, #325, Sausalito, CA 94965), please know that we continue to check the mail twice per week, so there will be a delay in our thank you letter being mailed to you.

If you need to reach us, please email NYF. Please feel free to give us a call and leave a message, as staff will be periodically be calling in to check voicemail.

Learn more about how Nepal Youth Foundation makes real change possible in Nepal on our Programs page. Read our latest newsletters or be the change and donate to NYF today.

Emergency Lifeline Halfway Home for Women, A Covid Response by NYF

Emergency Lifeline Halfway Home for women, is another Covid Response program developed by NYF.

When we at NYF realized back in March 2020 that COVID-19 would be coming soon to Nepal, our emergency response team in Lalitpur made the difficult decision to pause the normal operations of our Nutritional Rehabilitation Homes.

Nepal’s country-wide lockdown was successful in slowing the spread of COVID-19, but now the virus is spreading more widely. According to international virus trackers, there are now more than 10,000 confirmed cases in Nepal, with 10,000 more swabs awaiting test results. The Nepalese government is predicting an increase to 50,000 cases within the next month, and the actual number of cases is certainly much higher than is known.

This past week, NYF staff member Amrit (pictured below) transported our first seven quarantine guests to the NRH. Each woman, like Bilhana, has spent the past several months stranded abroad, unable to work due to lockdowns throughout the world. The Nepalese government has finally been able to rescue them and bring them home.

Below, Heena (name has been changed), age 24, breathes a sigh of relief, looking at the beautiful Kathmandu Valley landscape in a restful moment. Here at the Kathmandu Valley NRH, she will have a bed, the company of other women who speak her language, hot nutritious meals, access to healthcare, and comfortable space for quarantining as her country moves forward.

At NYF, we are honored to be equipped to offer this service. We are grateful for the many loving donations that built our NRHs—buildings we never imagined would be used for this purpose, but which have prepared us for this difficult moment in world history. Thank you.

Keeping this program afloat will take work, however. Our staff members need PPE to ensure the highest levels of safety for the women in our care. Food costs will continue to rise, as will the routine costs of running a facility like the NRH: electricity, water, gasoline, cooking fuel, and incidental repairs. We will need masks for our guests, soap, hand sanitizer, linens, and more, all of which will be provided in a Welcome Kit upon arrival. In a crisis impacting the entire world, NYF needs you as much as it ever has—perhaps more.

As we work together in the coming weeks and months, we can prove how much #LoveWorks. Each thoughtful gift supports the health, safety, and wellness of women and children experiencing catastrophic instability during this worldwide crisis. If you would like to help support women thorough our Emergency Lifeline Halfway Home or another NYF program, please make an online donation today.

Dhanyabad,
Som Paneru, President

Credit card donations via our website are still being processed without delay, as are direct bank transfers (EFTs). If you mail a check to our office (3030 Bridgeway, #325, Sausalito, CA 94965), please know that we continue to check the mail twice per week, so there will be a delay in our thank you letter being mailed to you.

If you need to reach us, please email NYF. You can also call us and leave a message, as staff will be periodically be calling in to check voicemail.

Community Nutrition Kitchen in Lalitpur, An NYF Covid Response

Community Nutrition Kitchens in Lalitpur are providing hot, nutritious lunches free-of-charge to children in locked down communities. This effort has been a successful launch of one of our new COVID interventions for people in Nepal. For each dollar donated, one child can enjoy a complete, delicious, nutrient-rich lunch. With food costs rising as Nepal’s lockdown continues, these lovingly prepared meals provide kids with the most vitamins they’ll eat in a week.

At NYF, our 30^th anniversary year is developing much differently than we’d planned. COVID-19 continues to disrupt regular life across the world. But our dynamic family of supporters and our dedicated staff are determined to do all we can for the children of Nepal, especially during this time of international crisis.

Sejun (name has been changed), age 11, lives in Lalitpur, on the south side of Kathmandu Valley. He was one of 50 children who arrived at the NYF Community Nutrition Kitchen this week. As a growing boy, his appetite won’t slow down just because there’s a lockdown – and making food stretch from week to week is exhausting and nerve-wracking for his mother. When they heard that NYF would be providing free hot lunches for children like Sejun, there was no question about it. The day of our Community Nutrition Kitchen in Lalitpur, they put on their masks and walked down to the public school, where NYF staff members were waiting with steaming pots full of rice, daal (lentil soup), curry, sautéed spinach, tomato achar, lito (super flour), carrots and cucumbers. This provides a complete nutritional meal.

NYF is developing our Community Nutrition Kitchens in Lalitpur program based on similar successful programming that followed the devastating earthquakes Nepal experienced in 2015, as well as knowledge gained from holding our Nutrition Outreach Camps before the pandemic. We’re fortunate to have a nutritionist on our team in Nepal, and devoted staff members who know how to create delicious, kid-friendly, nutrient-rich meals for large groups.

As this program moves forward, NYF expects much larger groups than were served at this school in Lalitpur. Communities in Nepal are full of hardworking, devoted families whose livelihoods have been impacted by the pandemic. They’re wondering how they’ll manage to feed their growing children due to the lockdown. NYF is determined to help – but we’ll need a lot of teamwork to succeed!

The Community Nutrition Kitchen in Lalitpur this week was sponsored by my 11-year-old daughter, Karuna. In 2017, when she was 8, Karuna wrote and illustrated her first book, The Animal Adventure, to sell in support of children impacted by deadly monsoon floods. Now she’s been selling her book again, and for 5,000 of her hard-earned rupees (about $50), Karuna provided lunch to 50 kids like Sejun. Karuna’s generous heart is just one of the many reasons NYF knows that #LoveWorks.

Maybe you would like join Karuna to help us continue developing Community Nutrition Kitchens to provide healthy meals to more children like Sejun? Every thoughtful dollar donated provides a growing child with a hot, nutritious midday meal full of the vitamins he or she needs to stay healthy, strong, and happy. To make an online donation to NYF’s ongoing COVID Response, please click here.

Thank you,
Som Paneru, President

Credit card donations via our website are still being processed without delay, as are direct bank transfers (EFTs). If you mail a check to our office (3030 Bridgeway, #325, Sausalito, CA 94965), please know that we continue to check the mail twice per week, so there will be a delay in our thank you letter being mailed to you.

If you need to reach us, please email NYF. You can also call NYF and leave a message, as staff will be periodically be calling in to check voicemail.