Stop Making Paper Orphans of Nepal Children

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.