Stop Making Paper Orphans of Nepal Children

Orchid Garden Nepal sits on rented land. One huge problem that results from that is we can't control much about that land. A year ago the landlord, who also owns the land directly behind Orchid Garden decided to bring in a bunch of fill dirt and raise the level of that land higher in preperation to build something on it. That left Orchid Garden sitting about one foot lower than the property behind it. When the monsoon came, the impact of that became obvious, and painful. We were flooded, as in FLOODED completely. Classes were closed for days as Orchid Garden staff struggled to drain the water, then dry everything out. Carpets were taken up off the floor and hung out dry, all the furniture and classroom tables and chairs had to be moved outside to dry. Putting it all back together again once the water level went down was no small undertaking either. Some at Orchid Garden believe this was intentional. The landlord would love to see Orchid Garden move as land values have risen steeply and he can develop this land. There will come a day when we will have no choice but to relocate which will be a massive undertaking and an expensive one. It may be the straw that breaks the camels back or in our case the event that causes the founder, Bina, to give up after seven years of educational excellence for the children of poor working families. Certainly this disaster has been a large financial burden for Orchid Garden to bear. We've been able to provide some funds from our own general operating fund, but I know it's only made a dent in this. Take a look at the photos and then see if you can't give a hand here to help Orchid Garden recover. 

Thank you.

I was purusing the pages of the Orchid Garden on facebook and the wordpress site today and was struck by how much we owe a debt of gratitude to all the volunteers who come and work at Orchid Garden. Orchid Garden is a huge undertaking and gets no government funding and has no institutional sources of funds either. Orchid Garden takes care of ovr 130 children each day from the token user fees the parents pay, from donations at Global Giving and from supplies and materials that volunteers bring. It's a shoe-string budget and yet miraculously, it works and in fact will expand next year and add third grade classes to the existing nursery, kindergarten, first and second grade classes. 

But, back to the impact of volunteers. I was looking at how many posts our various pages and sites have where the topic involves gifts from volunteers. Sometimes is books or school materials, sometimes it's rice and other food products which we really need to feed all the children daily. Sometimes it is the gift of education such as the recent workshops conducted on health and nutrition which was given for the parents of the children to help them stretch their meager weekly wages into a better, more balance diet for the children. We had 52 parents attend this workshop which is a great turnout for these hardworking families. 

Some volunteer activities are perhaps more whimsical, such as the recent performance of Cinderella that the children practiced for and then performed. Art is an important teaching tool at Orchid Garden though, and few things build confidence as much as performing arts. 

I'm adding some photos to this update of the nutrition class, donated books and Cinderella too. Your financial support is critical in keeping Orchid Garden in operation, but you may also want to consider coming yourself to Orchid Garden and contributing whatever your passions are, music, art, math, you name it. Hope to one day see you here.