End Child Labour in Southern Nepal

We are so excited to tell you that our library is fully operational now! We have finished all the decorating and all the furniture has been made - and the shelves are full of books!

Our teachers are now conducting some of the classes in the library to get our children used to these sorts of surroundings. We are also slowly opening the library to the community children and from January we are planning a number of fun events to keep the children motivated to study, and the parents involved. 

The first 10 families have started planting their vegetables as part of their income generation activities and the rest of the families have been divided into groups and are starting their training this month. From the beginning of 2024 we will help the families with generating income through bamboo furniture making, local jewellery making and tailoring. We can't wait to see the results!

From February 2024 we will be expanding our project to further 50 children so our staff are very busy now with all the preparations. We are also starting our new investigations into other brick factories in Rautahat - the plan is to investigate them all before the end of May 2024 and we'll be working hard to make it happen. 

We are so proud of our children - none of them have gone back to work at brick factories, and all of them are studying. And most importantly - they really love studying. 

Thank you for all your support - it really makes a difference to those children's lives. 

We are so pleased to say that 105 children are now receiving education as part of our project - our extra curricular classes and are attending local schools. We couldn't say not to the extra children who, after seeing how much our children are enjoying the classes, wanted to finally (in most cases for the first time in their lives) receive education. 

There are of course different challenges due to weather, political situation, schools having unplanned holidays and many more unexpected events - but one thing is for sure, all the children continue to study, are making a progress, and are having fun at the same time. 

For the past few months we have been working on setting up a proper family support programme and we are very happy to announce that the first 10 families are starting their agricultural project. We have helped them set up a cooperative, provided the initial training (more training coming soon), have leased the land and signed an agreement with an agent who will assist with the agricultural part of the training and guarantees to buy all the vegetables grown by our families at a market rate. As it is a monsoon season in Nepal now, we will start proper planting after the rains finish. It is a bit of a strange year with the weather this year - it has been VERY hot and dry and the rains are expected to finish later than usual due to a massive delay to the start of the rainy season. 

From September or so, we will be enrolling the other families into other activities, we are planning the best solutions for individual families based on their skills, interests and resources available. The plan is to have all families set up with a sustainable business by the end of 2023 and we will spend year 2024 on evaluating of all these activities to help us build even more sustainable projects in the future. 

And exciting news from our library - it is all officially finished! Small set back - there is a road construction going on nearby and we are not able to deliver any furniture or supplies that we have had made for the library. It will apparently all be finished in a week or two so we are waiting eagerly to be able to deliver all the books and start some exciting classes with the children. 

Thank you so much for all the support - this is such an important project and we would not be able to deliver it without your help. Thanks to you, none of our children are working at brick factories anymore and all are attending school. Thank you!