Our Charity - Namaste Children's House
The Kildrummy Inn’s nominated charity is Namaste Childrens House.
Update August 2010
New grand total of £8,500 raised! (Aug 2010)
£6000 was given to the orphanage during our visit in January 2010. Since our return another £2,500 has so far been raised.
Latest NCH news:
London International charity meeting.
Around 30 of us met on Saturday 7th August in London to discuss various aspects of NCH. Personally it was great to meet up with many of the wonderful people who do work such as our for NCH from arround Europe. So many great & kind people working from different backgrounds & countries for the benefit of the children & projects Visma & NCH cares for & runs.
One thing that became very clear & worrying at the meeting is the need to push ahead with the Orphan Village plan. With tourism increasing, land prices rising, the current rented buildings leases running out & indications my the owners that they won't renew the leases in 2012! We need to act fast to secure the purchase of land & start building the village to give NCH a permanent base & secure the futures of the home & its children a.s.a.p.
(Click village plan to open plans)
The plans (above) for the village will solve the problems of uncertainty regarding the rent & leases of the current buildings.
Provide a permanent secure home for up to 350 orphans & vulnerable young women; as well as house all the various projects under the NCH umbrella all in one area.
Please click on the map to open up full details of the plans for the village & see if you can help in any way.
How we got involved:
Whilst working with Gurkha chefs when in the forces. Darren developed a love for these wonderful people, their superb food & culture. A couple of years after moving to the Inn in 2004 we discovered a Nepalese restaurant called Gurkha in Aberdeen. (Now called the Gurkha Chef) over time we became friendly with Ashok the then owner who comes from Pokhara.
Always asking questions & seeking information about Nepal, Ashok suggested we should go & find out for ourselves! After a year of so pondering In July 2009 we decided to go & were delighted that Ashok said he would join us.
Over the years we have been at Kildrummy we have always tried to raise money for charity. From local organisations, projects & schools to Clan, Macmillan, The Queen Elizabeth hospital in Malawi for example. So we decided that as we were going to Nepal we would try & find somewhere there.
After several weeks of research & extensive trawling through hundreds of internet pages one organisation kept jumping out from the rest and so it was Namaste Children’s House was chosen.
There were lots to choose from & understandably so. Up to that point we were blissfully unaware that Nepal is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world, as poor as countries like the Rwanda & Angola. However due to Nepal’s location, land locked between India & China we don’t receive the exposure to their situation like we do with the likes of the African nations.
The professionalism of the orphanages website, the projects they run & the fact that we had some excellent feedback from a couple of contacts from around the UK (Sirius foundation & John Riley in I.O.M.) to confirm the legitimacy of the organisation soon confirmed that we had chosen a wonderful place.
Our fundraising begun in earnest. Darvia Nepali Orphanage Fund was set up along with a fund bank account. Through shopping bag packs, sponsored cycles, leg waxing, a silent auction, sponsored fasts, a charity golf day & of course many kind donations from our diners & residents here at the Inn. We were delighted to transfer £6000 direct to the orphanages bank account in Nepal prior to our trip in January 2010.
About Namaste Children’s House:
Namaste Children’s House is a home-style orphanage in Pokhara. Nepal’s 2nd city.
It was founded in 2003 by Visma Raj Paudel. Namaste Children’s House is legally registered in Kaski district -Nepal and is affiliated with the Social Welfare Council in Kathmandu.
The organization is dedicated to providing a loving home, proper nutrition and healthcare, and a good education to the poor, needy, abandoned, and orphaned children of Nepal.
Over 92 children are living in our two rented homes called Namaste Children's House and Onni Children’s House, located in Lakeside and Damside, Pokhara, respectively. Their ages vary from 18 months to 18 years.
The Namaste Handicraft centre in Damside is a short drive from the main orphanage building. This houses single & desperate mothers & their children as well as being home to the handicraft centre.
Namaste Children’s House is not just an orphanage. It has & supports many different projects as well as the orphanage:
One hundred twenty-five children are supported by an education scholarship program.
The Orphanage also works with & supports street children in Pokhara.
There is also the empowerment project for single and desperate women.
Micro credit schemes have also started very recently to support some poor Nepalese families to establish small business for their future sustainability.
The Women's Handicraft Centre Project is designed by to empower single women with children who have been widowed, abandoned, abused & divorced by their husbands.
All NCH activities are conducted in close coordination with concerned local organisations including Child Welfare Committee, Central Board Organisations, NGOs, Village Development Committees (VDCs), District Development Committees (DDCs), Municipalities, District Education Office, Police Department and the essential central level authority.
Our 1st Visit – January 2010
Our 1st visit to Nepal & the orphanage was in January 2010.
When you walk through the gates of the orphanage & leave at the end of the day you realise just what a wonderful place & organisation this is.
Being able to visit the orphanage, spend time with the children & put voices & personalities to the pictures & faces we had seen prior to the trip was very special.
You can see Visma is totally dedicated to the care & welfare of the children, young women & projects that NCH does & runs.
Within 10 minutes of our visit to the Onni children’s house & handicraft centre a young girl was escorted in through the gates. She was returning from school. Born with severe deformities & abandoned. A beautiful & happy girl who was clearly in pain when she walked. So far the orphanage has paid for around a dozen operations & she will probably need the same amount again before she stops growing.
The young women there are so appreciative. Especially of the opportunity they have been given. Talking with them you could see the enthusiasm they have for what they are doing.
The children at the main orphanage building are a delight to be around & spend time with. As you can expect it’s a pretty crazy place with 80 kids running about. Life for the children is well structured though. They have a daily routine, which runs from 06:00hrs to 22:00 hrs each day if they are old enough to stay up that late!
Washing, prayers, yoga, cleaning, breakfast, homework, school, then play, jobs, more homework then dinner as a rough guide. Six days a week. Only Saturdays they are not at School. They want to learn very much, & their English is good; making communication with them very easy. Their play time is a little different to our children’s too. No computers, games consoles or TV to watch here!
Helping them with their homework was a challenging experience! From explaining where Alford is in the Atlas, all of a sudden lead to a 1000 questions! From what do people do in Alford, to eating cows! (Sacred in Nepal) to marriage of love rather than by arrangement & the differences between our cultures.
The house mothers play an important role in the care of the kids. Replacing to some extent what the children have lost. The 1st point of contact when there is a problem, when someone needs help, to cleaning & organizing, changing nappies of the babies, making sure the kids are off to school with everything! Like real mums I guess but for 80 kids! They are always happy & do a fantastic job.
The building is a practical place. It should be it was intended to be a hotel in the tourist area of Lakeside. There’s a library with books donated from all over the world. Reception where guests sign in & out, communal area, medical room, counselling room, washing area or as I nicknamed it the scrub shop. No washing machines here! All done on the ground with bars of soap, rinsed & hung to dry! An area for eating all be it on the floor. Small garden, boy’s level, girl’s level, with rooms on each, set in rough age groups with up to 12 in each room in bunk beds. & the babies room.
With some of the money we raised a new scheme where by young & vulnerable women (outside the orphanages current projects) can apply to join a new Woman’s empowerment project. A 3 month course teaching sewing & education. How to run your own finances, & to be self sufficient. Coupled with a good support network. It has strict criteria for being accepted ensuring that the only very needy receive placements on the course & that it is not open to abuse.
The 1st course due to start in May received over 50 applications. The idea being that we can give & teach these women the skills they need to survive & be successful. Therefore ensuring their children won’t end up becoming the next ones through the orphanages doors.
Our time there left an even greater impression on us than we had imagined. A very humbling & heart warming experience. We decided with no hesitation to continue raising money for them. To make Namaste Children’s House the official charity of Kildrummy Inn & continue to help however we can through our organisation Darvia Nepali Fund.
Our Future Help:
We will continue to raise money for NCH through various activities & events we can do here at the Inn & the surrounding areas.
Darren is available to do talks & presentations to groups that would like to visit or Darren can come & talk at your meeting place or event. In the past 3 weeks he has been to Strathdon primary school & Lumsden over 50s.
We are also assisting & helping with the promotion & awareness of NCH through social networking sites twitter & facebook. So if you use these follow & become a fan!
The bigger picture for NCH is to build a village to care for & look after around 300 children & vulnerable people. It’s a big project & we will try & help in any way we can in the future. To help Visma & the NCH team achieve this goal.
If you would like to help or make a cheque donation you can contact us via any of the following means:
Email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Telephone:
01975571227
Address:
Darvia Nepali Orphanage Fund
C/o Kildrummy Inn
Kildrummy
Alford
Aberdeenshire
AB33 8QS
More information can be found here.
www.orphanagenepal.org
Last Updated (Monday, 16 August 2010 16:55)