6000 Street Children in Nepal: Give Them a Home

Boys are happy - the cold, foggy winter in Birgunj is over! This year was exceptionally bad and many people in the Terai region got badly affected. At the same time, it was great to see how local communities were helping each other - there were many collections of clothes, wood for fire, blankets and food for those that needed that the most. Our boys got some lovely blankets, jumpers and hats donated by local businesses and they are proudly wearing those all the time!

Amongst many Nepali festivals our boys have recently celebrated Shivaratri (celebration of lord Shiva) and had a very big camp fire and some delicious food and sweets. 

We have also set up a nice fish pond by our home now so the grounds look much prettier. We had a volunteer art therapist visit the home for a few days and she did a lot of workshops with the boys. Now all the amazing artwork is proudly being displayed in the hallway and other rooms. We were all amazed with the quality of some of the artwork - we think we have some geniuses amongst our boys!

We have had two new boys joining our home - one is staying with us and enjoying the school, and we managed to find a family of the second boy from India, and successfully linked him back with his parents. Now we are monitoring his progress to make sure he doesn't end up on the streets again. 

We are now finalising plans with the local authorities to open the day care centre for street children, The authorities are being very supportive and are offering us free land and other support. We will keep you updated with all the progress!

And as always - thank you so much for all the support!

In Nepal everyone likes their holidays - there are so many of them! Children quite enjoyed time off school and were engaging in a lot of activities during the break. First, they celebrated the Dashain holidays, then Tihar (Diwali) and Chhath. In total about a month of celebrations. 

Nuria, one of our volunteers has been spending a lot of time in Birgunj recently and the boys are proudly speaking some Spanish now. We always get greeted with 'Hola!' now rather than usual 'Namaste'. They are working now on the Snow White play so we cannot wait until we see the performance. The costumes have been done and they are all practising their roles. Little Ramesh is quite excited to be the princess. We will post some photos after their performance. 

Also, Ram is getting better speech therapy now, thanks to Anna, a speech therapist that spent a bit of time with him and will be checking on his progress via Skype when she is back home. Ram is so excited with his exercises so we are hoping soon he will be able to say a few more words.

From another happy news, Samrat has been linked with his dad whom we finally managed to track and who is very happy to have his son back. We will be monitoring if Samrat definitely attends school and will stay in touch with them in case they need any other support. We are also working on linking a couple more boys at the moment with their families so if all goes to plan, we will have more happy news to share soon. 

We have recently welcomed a new very young street boy to our home and he is starting school now - the boys are looking after him very well. 

And to finish the report with some more exciting news - we will soon be opening a day care centre in Birgunj to help even more street children. We're still in the planning phase but all should be up and running in the next few months. 

And as always - thank you all so much for the continuous support. Children are very happy at the home and it's all thanks to you!