Our children’s house is located in Birtamod, in the Jhapa District, in south-eastern Nepal. It is a place rarely visited by tourists and where part of the population lives in extreme poverty. The children we assist currently live in a rented space where they grow up, eat, learn and play together. They are taught and cared for by women we hire, who are with them around the clock. In addition to food, clothing and other essentials, they also receive medical care as needed, and most of them are able to attend a private school in Birtamod free of charge. As far as we have been able to ascertain, all of the children are from the Jhapa region.
There are thousands of children living on the streets of Nepal. In many cases, their parents have died in traffic accidents or lost their lives in natural disasters or falls while working in the mountains. Other children are simply put onto the street in the hope that someone else will take them in, because their own poverty-stricken families are no longer able to feed them. As a result, the children’s house takes in new children every month, and we do our best with the space and financial resources we have to care for them for shorter or longer periods of time.
In 2019, we received generous donations of both land and funds that have allowed us to move the children into our own children’s house. Alongside continuing to finance our project, our next step in Birtamod is to expand our children’s house so that we can house and care for more children.