Dear all,

Last but not least, we would like to tell you all about our support to the orphanage of Hopeful Home, which is located in Jhaukel, 3 miles outside of Bhaktapur and is surrounded by the rice fields of the Kathmandu Valley. There are now 14 children living in Hopeful Home varying from the ages of 6 to 18 years. Laxmi Support has been sponsoring Hopeful Home for more then ten years now. We have visited Hopeful Home at its three different locations and we have seen many children grow up and leave the home to start a new live outside the orphanage.

We visited Hopeful Home this time on three different occasions and it was lovely to see the children and their smiles. Anneloes made instant friends with the young girls and Juliette was fascinated by the small chickens in the back yard. Most Nepali children love dancing and it is part of their curriculum in school, so it didn’t took long for the old radio to be brought out and turned up loud. Karmala and one of the older girls started searching for Nepali and Indian dance tunes and the dancing began. The girls performed wonderful Nepali dances and even the boys couldn’t keep their feet still and joined in. Little Juliette stole the show with her own solo performance and of course Miss Laxmi had to show her ‘amazing’ dance skills to all the Nepali children. In the meantime Alex had a long conversation with the boys about English football and somewhat more important discussion about their experiences in the recent earthquakes.

Luckily the home was not badly affected by the quakes although the house does show a couple of inside cracks. The children have been sleeping in a tent in their vegetable garden for two months, but now have returned to their home. The children were frightened by the whole experience and they have been fortunate that their home is still safe. Many houses in the nearby city of Bhaktapur were badly damaged and over three hundred people lost their lives.

This year we arranged for the children’s white and grey school uniforms, blue track suits, black school shoes and white sport shoes and school bags. The tailor measured up their sizes and the shoe maker made a drawing of their feet on a piece of paper. We have bought the school bags in the whole sale shops of the New Road area in old Kathmandu while the track suits were bought at the school where the school logo was printed on the jackets. One morning we paid a visit to their school, which is just a five minutes walk away, and were introduced to each and every class and teacher.

We have also arranged a school uniform for an 18 year old boy called Saugat, who used to live in Hopeful Home. Saugat started college three weeks ago and is studying Computer Science in Kathmandu. The college fees are sponsored for by another NGO and Laxmi Support is now sponsoring Saugat for a school uniform and shoes. The school books and stationary is paid for by himself by being a shop assistant outside school hours.

That was it for now, please share our photo’s on our Facebook page. Our website will be updated asap.

Great thanks to all our sponsors for your support and to make this all possible. You have all been amazing. Also great thanks to Ram and Saraswati for helping us purchasing all the goods and joining us wherever possible. It’s been a wonderful experience and we miss you all.

Big Namaste,
Samantha, Alex, Hendrik, Ram, Sylvia