ABOUT
Happy Home Orphanage is a private orphanage outside of Kathmandu that currently holds 100+ children.
Tsering’s Fund volunteers regularly visit Happy Home to provide wherever help we can offer to this worthy group. The woman who runs the orphanage, Puja Pokhrel, is an absolute saint and works tirelessly for these children. Puja operates the orphanage herself with help from volunteers known locally as “didi”, which in Nepali means older sister.
The Didis have since the pandemic been desperately going from door to door literally begging for spare rice and lentils to help feed the children. The other directors of Tsering’s Fund and I in November of 2020 determined that the lack of food security at Happy Home had become a crisis that needed to be directly addressed by Tsering’s Fund. The annual cost of food for 100 children plus the Didis is approximately $24,000 USD.
Once these children have consistent access to healthy food we can begin the process of what we do best at Tserings Fund: education. We have already received a generous donation sufficient to hire four full-time teachers at a low total cost of $12,000 USD a year. This will allow consistency in education for the children. Historically teachers have been donating their time but it is all dependent on when or if the teachers show up.
Looking toward the future of Happy Home the next important and considerably more expensive problem is meeting the need for safe, potable water. Currently, the children must carry plastic containers of water up a steep hill every day. Happy Home has no plumbing and all water for cooking/bathing/etc comes from the containers. While meeting the immediate short term needs of the children this is not a sustainable long term solution. The components and estimated costs of a new water supply project for Happy Home is $20,000 USD.
In April, 2021, Peter Schmieding (President of Tsering’s Fund) plans to travel to Nepal (he has thankfully received the covid vaccine). Peter, with help from local Tsering’s Fund volunteers in Nepal, will meet at Happy Home to finalize ongoing food costs, teacher pay, and collect individual pictures of each child so we can launch a sponsorship program for these children at $400 per child per year.
This will cover the teachers salaries and food costs. We have also started a campaign to build a new well at Happy Home so the orphanage can have unlimited access to clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing. Please help by either sponsoring a Happy Home orphan or making a one time donation to building the well.
