Stop Child Brides in Nepal

Let me introduce you to the beneficiaries of this project, the children at the community school in the village of Mankhu, in Nepal. Mankhu is a small village, about 300 families live there. There's a small community school in the village that provides education up to the 5th grade. After class five, the students must walk an hour down a steep trail to reach the town of Madavbesi, which is by the way, in the Dhading District of Nepal, one of 75 districts in the country. 

All of the families, save for a few teachers and a shopkeeper, are subsistence farmers. Subsistence farming is basically having a piece of land on which you grow enough to feed your family and perhaps a small amount more that can be sold. Some of the families don't grow enough to feed themselves and face chronic food shortages. 

This July, I decided that while I was in Mankhu I would undertake to photograph as many of the children at the school as possible to share them with our donors. I took along some studio lights and my camera and set up in a classroom at the school. I also took a photo printer so that at the end I could give each child their photograph. While some of the children have been photographed by our volunteers in the village and have seen their photo in the LCD screen of a camera. None had ever had a physical photo to hold in their hands and take home to hang in their room. Now they do. I called this project #NameFaceStory and I"ve created a gallery with many of the children you can see HERE

You'll note from the photos that a number of the children still need uniforms. The youngest aren't required to have them, the older children are. Some do, some don't and some have hand-me-downs (if the shirt is blue it's an older siblings shirt from the school in Madavbesi) and some have missing buttons, tears and etc. With the money we raised so far we first made sure they all had notebooks and pencils in order to do homework. Next we made sure they had underwear (many of the girls did not) and shoes. Those were the most important things. We've provided uniforms to the extent possible at this time. Many still need them. For some, if not most of these kids their school uniform is their primary clothing. You see them all over the village always in these uniforms and not in other clothing which indicates they actually don't have a change of clothing. All of them could really stand to have more than one uniform given how much they depend on this uniform as their everyday clothing. If we can meet our current funding goal, we will revise the goal and work on a second uniform for all the children of Mankhu.