Nepal Orphans Home Event Planned At Savvy Tea At 5 p.m. On June 20

You are welcome to hear more about this amazing organization on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at Savvy Tea in Madison at 5:00 PM.

Nepal Orphans Home (NOH) aka, Papa's House, attends to the welfare of children in Nepal who are orphaned, abandoned, or not supported by their parents. Papa’s House provides for the children’s basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing, as well as schooling and health care, and administers to their emotional needs with love and compassion. Papa’s House allows children to grow up in a nurturing environment. The mission of Nepal Orphans Home is not just to rescue children from abject poverty, but to enable the children to develop and realize their potentials.

NOH was founded by Michael Hess who arrived in Nepal in 2004 and was acutely aware of the extreme poverty and shocking lack of government services in the villages. He returned home to the US, sold all his posessions and returned to Kathmandu to do something about the plight of the children.  He began by subsidizing an orphanage already operating in a dilapidated building in the Kathmandu Valley.  He bought food, bedding, clothes and medicines for the orphans.  In Nepal, corruption is rampant and Michael soon realized the need to secure a separate facility and to hire a select staff of local citizens that he could supervise to run the home properly for the children’s welfare.  He then opened a home, employing Nepali women to feed, launder, clean and care for the children, and to take shelter in the home themselves. Papa’s House became a sustainable home to children who had been lifted from the most dire conditions, their childhoods recaptured and access to an education secured.  Over the next five years, Papa’s House would grow to four homes in Dhapasi--one for 27 boys, and the original home plus two more now housing a total of 106 girls.

These children are now healthy, happy, nourished and have a future to look forward to.  They feel safe and are no longer concerned about being sold or abused.  This is an amazing organization to be connected to. 

My daughter and I were fortunate to be able to volunteer at NOH last summer for three weeks.  We were amazed by the smiles and happy natures of these children who have all endured so much in their short lives.  Every day, the children all walk in groups to school chattering with happy voices and looking forward to going to school.  It is quite a difference from the grumbles I have listened to from my children as they "had" to go to school.  It is a priviledge in Nepal to be given an education and each child seems to look forward to the priviledge.  

We had many experiences that will forever remain in our memories, fixing up an old building for the children to use as a library/craft room, teaching in the kindergarten class, volunteering at a baby orphanage, assisting trafficked women, helping the children with homework and so many more wonderful times.  I encourage everyone to look up Nepal Oprhans Home (www.nepalorphanshome.com) to see how you can help and/or volunteer.