Nepal Bal Ghar - Our mission....
Nepal Bal Ghar - Something Right Children's Home was started April 1st in 1997 in Sanepa,
Kathmandu, Nepal. I - Lars M. Braaten - am the person in charge, responsible for the Children's Home, Lars M. Braaten.
People often ask me:
Why do you do it? and How did you come upon that idea?
and everytime I reply:
Because I have that option! I am in good health, financially OK and because my heart burns for Nepal. In
fact, it is quite 'easy', when you relate to and think about the huge need for education here in Nepal.
Just read this: Facts about the children of Nepal:
(figures are estimated by CWIN - Child workers in Nepal & UNICEF)
- 9 mio. children in Nepal. 60 pct. of those work in one way or the other - the girls mostly work double the
time of the boys.
- A full time working child works average 10-14 hours daily without any breaks. If the child stays more than 3
minutes in the filthy toilet, it is beaten!
- A child earns roughly 50-100 rupees (approx one US dollar) a month. For this money you can buy 8 Cokes.
- 40.000 children work without getting paid, because their parents owe the employer, who often gave the parent
a loan, and therefore 'has the right to the working labour of the children.' The child pays back the loan,
which takes time.
- 200.000 children are working under slave like conditions. 86 pct. of these work as servants in private homes.
Most of the children from the countryside have been sent to the larger cities by their parents.
- 200.000 girls and young women have been sold for prostitution in India.
- 60 % of the boys and 88 % of the girls cannot read nor write.
- 34 % of all marriages are children below 14 years!
- 1,800,000 children under 6 years of age do not get correct food
- 17 % of the children live less than five years!
As you can see, we have much to do!
First of all, give them a place to be, where care, acceptance and respect
for the individual ist priority number one - a place, where physical hard work
and abuse do not prevail. Secondly basic teaching ensures, that the children
can attend the existent school system. The children live in the house as at
boarding school. In this way we can influence them in the right way.
Our mission has turned into - I write turned into, because earlier we
imagined, that we also should try to help children of the street. They just do
not want to be with us, because they feel 'too good' on the street to be
'locked up' with us! If they stayed with us, they had to learn discipline,
attend school etc. Now we concentrate and focus on those children, that would
have ended up on the street, if they did not come to us, right now - 2004, May
- 47 children.
About "our" children
9 have no parents and have lived with uncles and aunts or sisters and
brothers. These sisters and brothers have average 2-4 children themselves! and
therefore do not 'need' one child more.
Other 23 have only one parent, 20 of the 23 because the father is gone; either
drinking, with another woman or dead. In the case of the last 3, the mother is
gone and for the same reasons.
The rest of our children do have both parents, but in most cases one of them
is sick and/or they just don’t have the means to take proper care of the
children. For all of them school have been for the most part nonexistent (only
11 out of 47 have been to school and only for max. a few years), proper food
etc. haven’t they gotten, opdragelse, tryghed og muligheden for at være børn
har de ikke oplevet.
Especially our basic school training at the house, which everybody gets – for
at least one year - has shown to be effective. Per June 2004, 41 of "our"
children are attending the local government school, 2 in class four, 9 in
five, 10 in six, 10 in seven, 2 in eight, 5 in nine, 1 in ten and 2 in class
eleven.
This year the following have begun life in the "real" school, Tulasi and
Anitha in class 4, Suraj and Surendra in class 5 and Pralad, who has been to
school before he came to us, in class 7. So we have six children left in our
own school working hard to be ready next time around.
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