American Himalayan Foundation

Need a good cappuccino in Namche?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:36:05 +0000

His was a degree in Tourism and Hotel Management from Pokhara University. After graduating, he spent a year at Dwarikas Hotel in Kathmandu and four months at Ashcroft Pinecreek Cook house in Aspen. With this experience, he opened Café 8848 in Namche Bazaar serving Illy coffee to trekkers, and the bookstore. In between, after two years of training, he is also an assistant instructor at the Khumbu Climbing Club.

Barista, bookstore owner, climber – not a decaf life. And he has a compassionate streak. For the help he received for college he wants to give the same opportunity to another child in need - so he supports a boy from a village in the Khumbu to go to school in Namche.

Nyima shares a few of his thoughts. “I feel glad to know AHF’s Norbu Tenzing who gave me moral support and idea from time to time. Also AHF has been doing lot of help to Himalayan people and in their children’s education. Thanks to AHF on behalf of me and whole Himalayan people”.

Tsedo

A special lunch at Kunsang Choling.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:23:51 +0000

Here’s a glimpse of two of the nuns pursuing their Shedra graduation for the Khenpo degree.

Ani Nawang Dolma, 35 years, is from Jiri and joined the nunnery at 25 years. After nine years at Shedra she wishes to stay for 3 years cave retreat to practice and apply what they have learned at Shedra. And then teach young nuns at the nunnery.

Ani Palden Chodon, 21 years is from Tsum in the Nubri of Manaslu. Her favorite subject is the “practice of the Bodhisattva.” She also plans to stay in 3 year retreat after Shedra.

Like Ani Palden and Ani Nawang, the 32 other nuns pursuing Shedra will become Khenpo. Lama Gondop is very proud of the nuns and their academic interest and happy he is useful in helping these destitute girls from needy families receive a degree.

In the organic vegetable garden in their backyard they are growing garlic, cauliflower, radish, potatoes and onions. I enjoyed the mess lunch with them of the fresh vegetables and red rice from the garden.

Tsedo

A former SGT student frees family

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

An uneducated and unaware young couple might just acknowledge their plight as hopeless. But with a 10th grade education and eight years of reinforcement from RHEST, Asha knew enough to know their situation was unacceptable. She called her village back in Nepal and convinced the eloped girl to return. This was enough to gain freedom for her and her husband who, with another enslaved Nepalese boy, returned to their village.

Neither were ever paid for their work in Gujarat. But they survived.

Asha recognizes her education and the counseling she received while part of SGT gave her both the knowledge and confidence to free her and her husband from slavery in India. She now teaches literacy to 22 mothers of SGT girls and is about to retake her grade 10 exams. If she passes, RHEST will welcome Asha back to finish her last two years of study as an Amar scholar.

More from Aruna.

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:16:28 +0000

But then they smile and say because of their education they believe that no one will be able to cheat them or lure them and sell them in slavery and that - changing the life of vulnerable young girls - makes our hearts smile.

Girls also share their stories about their parents wanting them to get married at an early age (14 or 15), without having education. They tell us that it is only because we support their school programs can they can attend school and hope for better future. And this gives us the encouragement that we need to continue to do our work amid all the challenges.

When an SGT girl from a Muslim community finished her graduation and began her higher study as well started working as a field worker for RHEST – which gave her a small stipend of $50 - her mother and father were so happy they had tears in their eyes. Sabina had told us the local community in Sanjyaja district did not approve in the beginning that she go to school. But later on they started to appreciate her as she had started to bring some income in her family and then the community wanted to send their girls to schools as well.

These stories make us believe that long term our hard work really pays off.

We laugh and we cry.

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:31:52 +0000

Her mother was not very happy that Kanchi had returned back as her mother had been promised some money by the relatives. But when Kanchi told her horrible story, her mother was happy that she had come back safely. Later, Kanchi came to know that the so-called uncle was known as a person who brought girls from Nepal to India either to sell them in red light areas or as slaves. Kanchi was then even happier that she had escaped, but both she and her mother were worried about her future life as they were too poor to provide her education. Then the local teacher in Sindhupalchok where SGT girls were getting education told the RHEST staff about the plight of Kanchi. She was too shy to talk to them in the beginning but when they told her that they would making it possible for her to go to school, she was overjoyed and slowly started telling her story of her life .

Kanchi is now a student in grade 10 and her mother is glad that she has started her new life.

Kanchi is one of the stories which have a happy ending. But we know that many girls from the villages have been lured to India with the promise of better job and later landed in a brothel or enslaved.

Aruna, from eastern Nepal

The best "New Year's Day" of the year!

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:11:43 +0000

How do we find them? Early in every new year our local partners in the SGT project, Rural Health Education Services Trust, are out in the villagers looking for over 1,000 at-risk girls in need of some assurances of safety, to add to those already with us. They will be told by teachers they trust, local community leaders, and girls already in SGT about girls who are in at risk of being trafficked. These girls will come from indigenous tribes, and those communities formerly described as untouchables who have been suppressed for centuries. They will come from broken and violent families who value a daughter less than that of a beast of burden. They will come from loving families who are so hopelessly poor, drowning in a flood of debt and desperation, that the only chance they see of survival is to sell their daughter - with the hope her new “family” will be kind. And there will be girls who ran or were rescued from exploitation and are so deserving of a new start.

AHF recognizes the causes and processes of human trafficking are myriad and complex, but we also know our solution is simple and effective. Relieve the girls’ families of the financial burden of education; and talk to the girls, their families and their communities about the risks they face and how much an education can do to protect them and improve their lives.

We also know it costs less than $100 a year to keep a girl safe.

Come April this year, 9,500 girls will all have a very happy start to the new school year. And on their behalf, I wish all AHF’s most generous friends a very joyful new year, whenever yours begins!

Bruce

January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:01:02 +0000

Happy New Year!

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:21:24 +0000

Happy Holidays!

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:59:08 +0000

The hope of the family

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:17:44 +0000

The woman was about to send her son off to work overseas - Aruna had intervened to help a little so he could stay. She was not an uncaring mother, only ruined by caste and unpayable debt and desperate in a way we can hardly comprehend. In Nepal, money is loaned mostly informally, by landlords and loan sharks: interest on rural debt is about 32% a year and can’t be paid off in installments. Plus, this woman is held responsible for all the family debts – her husband’s, and even relatives long since passed. So it quickly spirals past any ability to repay; even a hundred dollar loan can become impossible and families lose their land.

The daughter was safe as a RHEST student. She was clearly the hope of the family.

Aruna drank a glass of water the woman offered her. “I have to take,” she explained, “she is Dalit, untouchable, and this way she knows I am with her.”

Going back to the villages this time I could not only see how important this work is, but I could also see the changes in the girls over the decade we have worked here, despite all their other hardships. Ten years ago, they were a shy and tentative handful - first girls in their villages in school. Now there are many more and they are comfortable in class, articulate, savvy about the lies of traffickers, and absolutely determined to graduate and make change in their communities. They smile now, and their smiles have the knowledge of a future in them.

SGT is the intervention that prevents these girls from being sent away to brothels or to slave labor - and the end of any hope in their lives. To see that rocked my world.

Richard C. Blum