Her Farm, growing hope in the Himalaya

When we started Her Farm we had a vision of women coming from abusive family situations and living at the farm where they could support themselves and their children. That's still our mission and vision at the farm, however something else is taking place at the farm, something unexpected and wonderful. For the past two years as we've been working to get all the infrastructure in place to house and feed women and educate their children the farm has been managed by young women. Most of these young women also work for us at Mountain Volunteer, our program for volunteering in Nepal. 

These young women have proven to themselves and to everyone else just how capable they are. They are taking care of the livestock, farming the fields, caring for volunteers at the farm and helping build the infrastructure every single day. As one of them recently reported to me,  "I grew up in the city, I really didn't know what I was capable of doing, but now, I see this farm, I see all we've done here and I feel I am capable of doing anything."  That's a WOW event in my book. That's really growing hope in the Himalaya. 

I hope you'll click on the link included with this update to understand why it's so important that young women have options like this. I've related a true, heartbreaking story of what can, and has happened, when young women are not given options. 

Links:

• A heartbreaking story and why we need Her Farm

Greetings from Nepal where I've just spent the past two months working at Her Farm. Wow, it's been an exhaustng and exciting two months and the end of construction is in sight. This infrastructure phase is, however, the real key to the success of the program. Let me illustrate that with a true story that happened just last month. We brought a young woman out to visit the farm. She's all of 18 and was forced into an arranged marriage at only 15. She has a 3 year old daughter and her husband left her and took another wife. She lives with her daughter in a small, dingy room in Kathmandu where she cleans houses to survive. You'd think a young woman in this position would jump at the chance to live and work at the farm, but there are other considerations for her. Primary among her concerns is who will care for her daughter while she is working? Right now she can take her daughter with her when she cleans houses but holding a child in one hand and a hoe in the other while trying to work fields is a much harder matter. While at the farm we showed her where the daycare and preschool program would be located in the future, where her housing is now, but housing without a kitchen at the moment so we showed here where we were planning to build the kitchen in the future. The problem facing this young woman was this "in the future" part. You see, people in Nepal have been promised so many things that never come to pass that promises of what will be "in the future" hold no force or effect, they want to see it NOW.  

The young woman returned to her dingy room and to cleaning houses and perhaps when the future arrives will take another look. That's why we are working fast and furiously to create that daycare center, build that kitchen and finish our irrigation system as well, so that next time she visits, there's nothing to be done in the future, it's all here and ready to use now. 

We have finished the daycare center and the preschool program is up and running as well. See the video link for more on that. The construction is fully underway for the kitchen at this time too. Once all the infrastructure is in, we will be able to bring young women like the one in the story above and they can see that we aren't offering future promises but have a new life for them and their children NOW. 

To be honest, we need your help more than ever to make this final push and finish this phase of work. 

Links:

• Welcome to the new school at Her Farm