GlobalGiving.org: Psychological Counseling for 20 Nepali Children

Ankur Counseling Center Update

Teresa Parker — Wed, 25 May 2011 23:38:45 GMT

By Teresa Parker - Development Director

Nepal Youth Foundation’s Ankur Counseling Center (ACC) provides therapeutic counseling to nearly 1,000 adults and children, annually. In addition, ACC trains almost as many adults with backgrounds in education, medicine and mental health in counseling and therapy skills. Conducting orientation sessions quarterly, they also lead multiple-day training sessions and at least one advanced training session every year.

ACC’s results-oriented mental health programs continue to generate support and interest. Their staff now regularly makes presentations, teaches group sessions, and leads workshops in regional schools and colleges. With a leading-edge understanding of mental health and the many effective ways to minimize its effects, ACC receives invitations to present their methods to an ever-increasing number of professionals and organizations throughout Nepal.

Freed Indentured Daughters Receive Counseling and Counseling Training

The ACC staff of mental health practitioners continues to work closely with the Freed Kamalaris Development Forum (FKDF), the nonprofit organized by once-indentured and now free young women. With the assistance and training provided by ACC, these formerly bonded girls are able to deal effectively with their earlier traumas. The flagship training program offered through the FKDF, “Basic Counseling Skills,” continues to show remarkable results. This six-day training teaches accessible and transferable counseling and facilitation techniques which the young women can then put in service to help resolve the psychological troubles of their freed younger “sisters.”

In addition, a shortened three-day form of the “Basic Counseling Skills” course is now regularly given to school teachers and members of child care institutions, focusing on child psychology, communication skills and behavior change cycle.

Among their many effective modalities of treatment are Creative Movement Therapy (CMT) for stress management, Non Violent Communication (NVC) to enhance the understanding of the influence of language on behavior, and courses in “Sex and Sexuality” offered to adolescents, providing an open forum for exploring these topics while examining the associated emotions and social consequences.

In the schools and colleges, ACC also holds ongoing orientation sessions with young adults, providing information about the myths and realities of therapy. By these means, ACC continues to develop a positive attitude toward mental health counseling. These programs are fruitful for Ankur, allowing many opportunities to disseminate its services to the community and schools.

World Mental Health Day Celebration – October 10, 2011

ACC participated again in 2011 in the World Mental Health Day, using the event as a platform to raise public awareness about mental health issues in Nepal. ACC’s successes with their many modalities has helped to promote more open discussion of the problems of mental illness, which is still a new and sensitive subject for most Nepalese.

For more information about this program, please visit us at www.nepalyouthfoundation.org. Follow this link to watch our new 4 minute video:http://bit.ly/uv6is2.

We thank you for supporting this worthwhile project.

Links:

NYF now rescues children with HIV/AIDS!

Olga Murray — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:48:40 GMT

Your $75 donation can send them to school

Dear Friends,

The Nepal Youth Foundation has started to rescue children with HIV/AIDS!
The New Life Center in Kathmandu, Nepal provides excellent treatment to children with HIV/AIDS while teaching their parents to live hygienically and cook nutritious meals. This training dramatically reduces the risk of acquiring the illnesses that make HIV develop into AIDS, and lets HIV-infected people lead fulfilling lives. Find out more about this pioneering project!
http://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/programs/health/newlife.html

NYF's founder Olga Murray describes falling in love with Nepal
She also discusses NYF’s diverse programs for children and the organization's plans for the future, in an interview in the Napa Valley Register.
http://bit.ly/8XzPn6

Read an interview about NYF's life-changing projects!
Read an interview with the Nepal Youth Foundation's Development Director, Gregg Tully, about NYF's work to end child slavery in Nepal, scholarships, and children's homes. Also watch a video in which a blind Nepali girl describes the happiest moment in her life.
http://bit.ly/9Fihbt

NYF earns its fourth consecutive four-star rating
Because of our exceptional fiscal management, the Nepal Youth Foundation received its fourth four-star rating – the highest possible – from Charity Navigator, America's largest evaluator of charities. Only 8% of the charities evaluated receive four consecutive four-star ratings. This indicates our extremely efficient and effective implementation of the funds that you, our donors, contribute.

A hair salon held a fundraiser to rescue enslaved Nepali girls!
Salon Amour in Walnut Creek, California donated 100% of their proceeds for a day to NYF, and raised $5,000 – enough to rescue 50 girls! Find out more about how they did it at http://www.callandresponse.com/blog/?p=753. Can you hold a fundraiser, too? Read about many creative and fun ways you can help NYF rescue needy children:
http://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/howtohelp/supporters.html

Please donate today to enable the Nepal Youth Foundation to give unimagined opportunities to some of the most destitute children on earth. It only costs $100 to rescue a girl from bonded servitude and let her get an education.

Rescued from malnutrition for just $340

Disabled children are happy to get an education!

Links:

Celebrating 20 Years of Transforming Children’s Lives in Nepal!

Olga Murray — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:53:21 GMT

A girl NYOF rescued from a childhood of servitude

Dear Friends,

The Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF) uses an integrated approach to address the multitude of challenges facing Nepali children and empowers them to fulfill their dreams. To learn more about how NYOF’s diverse programs provide education for disabled children, nutrition, loving homes, and much more, visit http://www.NYOF.org .

Olga Murray, who founded the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF) 20 years ago, just turned 85. We celebrated this combined anniversary and birthday in San Francisco with around 200 of Olga and NYOF’s friends and supporters.

Watch ABC TV's VIDEO about NYOF’s work in Nepal and Olga's party! The video shows the results of the decades NYOF and Olga have spent helping Nepali Children, including rescuing girls who have been enslaved as bonded servants. http://nyof.org/newsroom/video.html#abc2

NYOF has rescued close to 10,000 girls from slave-like servitude, and more than 3,500 have been saved in the current year alone. NYOF will soon eliminate the tradition of selling Nepali girls into bondage. Read this news article about our accomplishments: http://nyof.org/newsroom/newsmedia.html#irin

"Happy Birthday Olga Mummy!" Watch this adorable VIDEO of the children of J and K House, the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation's excellent homes for children, sending Olga Murray birthday greetings. http://nyof.org/newsroom/video.html#birthday

These children can go to school because of NYOF

Now she is free from slavery and goes to school

Links:

NYOF Plans to Eliminate Child Slavery from Nepal

Olga Murray — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:20:48 GMT

These girls are free from slavery and in school, thanks to NYOF

Dear Friends,

This is going to be an exciting year for the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation. Next month, our staff will fan out over the five districts in west Nepal where girls are enslaved as bonded laborers to carry out our dynamic awareness program against the bonding custom. We will have a new weapon in our arsenal this year in addition to the piglet or goat we give the parents as incentives – the new government program to pay for the education or vocational training of all the girls we rescue. This is the culmination of a decade of lobbying the government by NYOF! We will emphasize to reluctant parents that their daughters will be eligible for a fully funded education by the government if they will consent to bring them home from their labors. Our plan is to rescue thousands of girls who have been or are about to be sold. Within a few years, we plan to completely eliminate the horrible tradition of selling Nepali girls into bondage. Those of you who have contributed to this cause have our eternal gratitude.

We still need your generous support to liberate the bonded girls and conduct our awareness campaign, because the government funding will not be used for these purposes.

We are deeply grateful for the contributions you have made. Please give as generously as you can, so that we can continue to help kids in Nepal to uncover and develop their full potential. We have a proven track record in making the most of your donations – you can do more good with a dollar in Nepal than almost anywhere else, and we spend a very small percentage of donations on administration (as evidenced by our four-star rating from Charity Navigator). We hope you will help us in our efforts to make a difference in these children’s lives.

Please let us know your thoughts by providing feedback in our comments section! Also, please tell your friends, family and colleagues about NYOF’s accomplishments!

Warm regards, Olga

Olga with one of the girls at K House, NYOF’s home for the needy

Links:

Learn more about the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation

NYOF gives impoverished children in Nepal many ways to unleash their potential!

Olga Murray — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:19:09 GMT

Learning how to sew as well as how to support herself

We are deeply proud of the successes and accomplishments of the many students in our programs. Take, for example, the girls in rural Nepal who we have liberated from bonded labor at the age of 16 or 17 and who have never been to school. It would be too uncomfortable for them to be in a class with first and second graders, so we place them in an intensive literacy course for nine months and then train them for a job – preferably one which will allow them to start a business of their own.

Early on, we created a sewing program for these older girls. The success of this program is guaranteed because they make school uniforms for the thousands of girls we have liberated and now support in school. (The Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF) pays the education expenses of former bonded girls, including two sets of school uniforms a year.) So there is no shortage of work for them. Better still, many of the girls we have trained have left the program and started their own sewing businesses in nearby villages.

We have also trained formerly indentured girls to run small shops, repair bicycles, etc. Many of the girls are remarkably entrepreneurial and have started their own businesses to generate income. One successful program sponsored by NYOF is a henna-growing project. The Dang District, where thousands of the liberated girls live, is ideal for growing henna, a profitable crop in Asia. (It is used by both men and women to give a reddish tinge to black hair and to paint designs on the hands and feet for special occasions.) Some of the liberated girls have formed a co-op to grow henna, have purchased machinery to process it, and are making a profit. We plan to increase the number of such projects.

Higher education is not the same stepping stone to job opportunities in Nepal that it is in most Western countries; even people with advanced university degrees have difficulty finding work. Our limited funding is sometimes better spent on providing more children with elementary and high school educations and on efforts targeted at eventual employment and self-sufficiency.

The unemployment rate in Nepal hovers around 50%. Thus, for many youngsters, guidance and training in a specific career path is far more helpful than years of higher education. We offer counseling to explore their strengths and interests, and then support them in training for 20 different careers, such as electrician, lab technician, cook, or midwife. These jobs often pay better than the office jobs many college graduates hold out for.

Our vocational programs actively encourage women to pursue careers that in Nepal are traditionally restricted to men. At a technical training school in Kathmandu, NYOF sponsors the only female in the plumbing course. Once she’s employed as a plumber, she hopes to serve as an example to others that women should not feel that certain careers are off-limits.

The vocational training staff makes an effort to maintain personal relationships with students in the training programs. Many of them are orphans or have no family support – an important advantage in getting a job in Nepal. We teach them general life skills such as compromise and negotiation, as well as specific skills to help them search for employment. After the training is completed, staff members guide them through the process of searching for jobs – which can be extremely daunting given the high unemployment rate – and facilitate interviews with potential employers.

A number of our vocational trainees who have found decent paying jobs are attending college on their own nickel. One of these is Bashudev Basnet. His father died when he was very young, and his mother earned a living by operating a small tea stall at the bus park in Kathmandu. We supported the education of Bashudev and his brother. After he finished high school and passed his college entrance exams, he enrolled in our vocational program as a cook and he found employment at a fairly snazzy restaurant on the fanciest street in Kathmandu. He was such a good worker that after only a month on the job he got a raise. He has enrolled in college in the morning and then goes to work on the day and evening shift. Not only that, he is now able to support his mother.

We are deeply grateful to you for standing with us. Please give as generously as you can, so that we can continue to help kids in Nepal to uncover and develop their full potential. We have a proven track record in making the most of your donations – you can do more good with a dollar in Nepal than almost anywhere else, and we spend a very small percentage of donations on administration (as evidenced by our four-star rating from Charity Navigator). We hope you will help us in our efforts to make a difference in these children’s lives.

Please let us know your thoughts by providing feedback in our comments section! Also, please tell your friends, family and colleagues about NYOF’s accomplishments!

Warm regards, Olga

P.S. Watch a video about Ramchandra, a student whose life was transformed by NYOF and who has a truly inspirational outlook, at http://www.nyof.org/newsroom/video.html#ram

Did you ever see a better looking plumber?

Bashudev and his friends in action

Links:

NYOF's Ankur Psychological Counseling Center starts a pioneering project!

Olga Murray — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:26:17 GMT

Ankur staff works with children at a Kathmandu school

Although the government of Nepal is undergoing more tumultuous changes, including a new Prime Minister, NYOF’s programs in Nepal are continuing to transform the lives of impoverished children, and provide them with unimagined opportunities.

NYOF’s Ankur Counseling Center is a pioneering center in Nepal, where psychology is still in its infancy. Many of the children supported by NYOF have endured unimaginable hardships at very young ages, such as being abandoned by their families. Ankur’s expert staff provides much-needed therapy to these kids, helping them to fulfill their potential.

Ankur has also started a pilot program which we’re very excited about. The staff visit schools and ask the children to accomplish tasks in groups. By observing the children’s interactions, the staff can identify which kids may benefit from counseling. We hope that this program will bring psychological care to youth throughout Kathmandu whose emotional challenges would have otherwise been ignored.

Thank you for supporting some of the most disadvantaged children in Nepal.

Please let us know your thoughts about this project by providing feedback in our comments section!

Links:

More information about the Ankur Counseling Center