Safe to Grow, Protecting Nepali Children after EQ

Even though the devastating earthquake in Nepal was three years ago, many of the 8 million people it affected are still suffering from the aftermath. I would like to share with you the story of a young boy, who came to Pokhara after the earthquake and whose life has been transformed by the work we are doing in Nepal.

Sandesh who is 14 years old wrote the following:

'I was all alone, my mum died and my dad was always drunk and didn’t want to look after me. On the streets I joined a gang, they helped me survive. But it was very hard – we had to steal and sometimes older kids and grown-ups treated me badly and would hurt me.

Things got better when I met Sunita [a Kidasha outreach worker]. She was kind to me and made me feel safe. Over time she persuaded me to go to their centre. Here I have somewhere to sleep, I eat good food and people look after me. They are helping me get better – when I was hungry and cold I used to sniff glue which made things feel better, but now I’ve have stopped. I am learning to cook and care for myself and I now go to school.

I used to think I would die on the streets but now I am hopeful. I’ve started visiting my dad and step-mother at the weekend. I plan to study hard and my ambition is to join the army'

Without the support of generous donors like yourself, we could never have achieved what we have in Nepal.  However, sadly there are many more children like Sandesh currently living on the streets.  It would be fantastic if this Christmas you were able to make another donation in order for us to reach more children.

Have a very Happy Christmas.

 

The Kidasha Team

I would like to share with you some of achievements in the last year, which without your support, we would have never been able to achieve.

Our core child protection services including two shelters, one midway home and seven drop-in centres in Pokhara and Butwal, supported over 3,000 working, street-involved or at-risk children, including 80 girl victims of sexual abuse and exploitation

We developed and launched a new Life Skills & Life Awareness course with the aim of improving life skills, sexual & reproductive health and emotional wellbeing among vulnerable adolescents living in urban slums. The course is delivered via outreach to community peer groups and more recently is being delivered in government schools in slum areas. Feedback has been extremely positive with plans to expand into more schools in the coming year.

By working directly in workplaces and with employer, we helped to improve working conditions and protect working children and adolescents from abuse and exploitation. In fact, this work over the last five years has helped reduce the number of child labourers under 14 years of age by 73%.

We revised our approach for working with street children to align with new government legislation and we established a new rehabilitation centre and midway home, thereby increasing our investment in helping children to move on from street and working situations. From this we helped 300 children to return to their families or independently in society

We supported over 650 of the poorest children into mainstream education by providing books uniforms, exam fees and by working intensively with parents to encourage them to actively support their children’s education, especially ensuring regular attendance. 

We enabled 560 children and young people for whom due to their situations, attending mainstream education was not a realistic proposition, to participate in alternative learning opportunities either in our drop-in centres or in their workplaces. Within this our new Functional Learning curriculum has delivered some impressive results including an average 53% improvement in participants’ reading, writing and arithmetic skills.

We provided 335 children with on-the-job training, vocational training, business training or job facilitation.

We obviously need ongoing support and so if you can, we would be extremely grateful if you could continue to support our work by generously giving again.

Many thanks

 

The Kidasha Team