Month: July 2010

Last updated11/15/09, much more to come, keep checking!

Timeline

March 2000: 5 weeks trekking in the Himalaya Mountains of Nepal in the Mt. Everest region, solo. Upon returning to Kathmandu, started meeting street children and took a liking to them immediately. Amazing spirit, sense of humor, resilience and love of life.  During this time I met a young boy named Til Bahadur Thapa Magar, who was around 8 years old, working at a coffee shop I used to frequent, sitting around talking with the Tibetan Buddhist Monks about life. Til struck me as an amazing boy, doing his job of serving tea and wiping tables and doing dishes very diligently with a huge smile on his face all the time. He piqued my curiosity, I took a liking to him. I’d visit daily to see him and smile at him and practice my Nepali language lessons with him. 

I spent 4 months in Nepal that trip, in between I spent a month in Tibet (thats a whole other story).  I returned to Nepal in October that year, after being in the states for 10 weeks. I found a room in a home in a neighborhood close to where Til worked. I inquired of the owner of the coffee shop, where Til worked and whose family Til lived with,  if I could send Til to school, meaning to pay his tuition, and the man said yes.  Despite the fact that the man would be loosing his laborer for 6 hours a day, he agreed to let Til attend school.  At the time Til was working from 4:30am until 9:30pm, then going home and doing the families dishes and cleaning before he went to bed. Til was from a small village a couple of days from Kathmandu by bus and on foot. His parents sent him to Kathmandu to get an education and to earn his keep. He left home at 7, had never seen a road or a bus or a city before leaving his village for this first time. Anyhow, I enrolled Til in the same school where the shop keepers 3 children went, so that he would feel like less of an outsider and to give him some sense of equal footing.

After 2 months in Nepal, during which time I was teaching english at a high end private school, I was called to go to Thailand to meet the American man who was producing and selling my greeting card line in the states. He wanted me to design paper product in Thialand,  I wasn’t interested.  I was very happy in Nepal, but he asked me to go for just a couple of weeks, so I went. Little did I know that I would end up spending 5 months in Thailand and falling in love with that country as well.  I never did return to my teaching job in Nepal, though when I next spoke with the principal of the school  he told me that the children in my classes were still keeping the daily journals I taught them to do and talking about my time with them.

On my subsequent trips to Nepal I began sponsoring more children and donating to organizations with leftover monies I had. When I enroll a child in school, I make a commitment to myself to educate that child through high school graduation, which is grade 10 in the Nepali system.  The money to fund the children comes from the revenue at my shop, donations from friends, as well as the donation jar from my  ‘have a heart’ program, on the front counter of IMAGINE. ‘Have a heart, make a donation’, the little sign says, and you can take a hand carved heart from Bali or a floating heart candle from Thailand.  Most years I have extra monies, more than I use for that particular school year. Some of the extra money I save for the following year, most of it I will spread among these favorite charities of mine in Kathmandu…Mother Theresa’s old folks home at Pashuputinath, an open air facility with dormitory style set up, all beds facing a common temple area in the center, for sick and debilitated elders with no family to care for them. Maiti Nepal, an organization which rescues Nepali girls and their children/babies from brothels in India that they have been tricked into going to under the pretext of being domestic help. Santhi Leprosy home where they house and treat leprosy patients. Hopeful Home for Orphans where they house and care for over 40 children without families.

There is more to say, I’ll get to it later

Bottom line is that each and every single one of us can make a difference. Nothing feels better than service, serving others in some small way.  I realize that in America I make a very meager living, in fact know few people who make what I do or less. But my trips to Asia make me realize that I am indeed a very wealthy woman. Compared to the families I sponsor, I am rich.  And there is nothing I want for. Nothing I need. And this is one of the things that compels me to help those in need. It takes so little to do so much.

If you are interested in donating, please email me.  All donations are greatly appreciated. I do this on my own, I am not a non profit, I do not have 501(c) 3 non profit tax status, therefore donations are not tax deductable. So if you donate to causes to help your bottom line, I am not the place for you. If you donate from the heart, for your heart, your donation goes 100% to the kids. I pay my airfare and expenses while in Nepal out of my own pocket, none of it comes from donations.

PEACE!