Presenting the Nepal Fashion Academy!

 It all started with one sewing machine. After visiting Nepal several times, and seeing how few job opportunities there were for under-educated women,  an idea formed. I have to come clean that this was not an original idea. I had first heard of buying sewing machines to help poor and marginalized women while reading a book by husband and wife team Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof called “Half the Sky.” The subtitle was  “turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide.” OK, that was right up our alley at Hands in Nepal. One solution the authors found that was effective was buying sewing machines for women who had no job skills. Sewing was a vocation, something you could do without academic education, although some sewing knowledge would be necessary, but could easily be taught. I tried the idea out with a woman my friend Durga introduced me to. Like many woman here who marry at an early age, and then lose their husbands for one reason or another, they have little education to fall back on. Providing for themselves and often children becomes “hand to mouth”, hard labor or begging. A sewing machine bought for $150 usd can provide lots of income-potential uses for such women. 

Word spread. Soon, we were buying sewing machines as well as books and taking both up to remote villages. The machines proved to be very useful. Women could share a sewing machine and repair clothes. They could tailor. They could sew sanitary pads. I would visit villages where we had donated machines and be presented with sun bonnets, pantaloons for babies,  one woman tried to make me a dress in appreciation ( it was impossible to fit over my broad shoulders and turned into a riotous round of laughing and teasing.)  We were asked to provide sewing instruction that went beyond simple “how to operate your machine”. It made sense that more training would allow women to do interlock, embroidery and more ‘industrial” strength stitches. Pillows, bed covers, costumes for cultural celebrations could be ordered and made. One woman was able to open her own dress shop and another expanded her small business into pillow covers and sewing the typical dress of tunic and under leggings common in Nepal. 

We unofficially tagged the name “One Stitch At A Time” considering each woman in the program starts her sewing journey with one stitch and then another.

The success of the Hands in Nepal’s sewing program spread everywhere. Now when I gave talks to American women, I’d get so much support that people would specifically write checks to purchase the machines. 

People who sewed understood how many ways sewing can help. An art form as old as the hills, known around the world in many cultures as a basic skill set, it could open bridges to those eager to support themselves and their families.

Presenting the Nepal Fashion Academy!

Last year our project manager Kavita Adhikari, told us about a school that teaches certified sewing courses. A 6 month course would qualify a woman to do all types of sewing. A full year would give that woman certification to teach sewing. With the certification, she would not only be able to do a high level of sewing projects but teach others. Bishol Gurung overseas the Nepal Fashion Academy where instructors teach a variety of classes and spent time outlining how the programs works when we visited him. 

Below:

Women sported by Hands in Nepal in the six month program, receiving news from Jan Sprague that they will be given scholarships from Hands in Nepal to complete the one year training

Last year’s graduate of the one year program, Anita, greeted us the day I was in Pokhara for a visit and to see the sewing program in action. The women were huddled around Anita when we walked in, learning advanced embroidery stitches. 

I was so

impressed with the beautiful stitching each was doing on a burlap bag for practice. Even more joyful when I found out they were presenting me with 3 of the finished practice bags. They will be going on our next auction table and hopefully adding to the sewing program funds!

The women were so grateful to Hands in Nepal for their sewing classes that they presented Hands a “token of love, “ a carved wooden symbol of peace. We then shared cake by feeding it to each other with our hands. It’s a cultural thing in Nepal to show respect by hand-feeding someone at special occasions. It seemed a fitting gesture since we were also celebrating Hands in Nepal helping them help themselves. After all the celebrations of the sewing successes, Kavita and I went to see Anita's new shop. When I first met her she had taken on the tiny shop her husband pretty much ran into the ground before deserting her and their two small children, leaving a mountain of debt.  Through our sewing program, she managed to sew her way to the top, and proudly showed me her slightly larger shop which now had two sewing machines. She has been hired to sew cultural costumes for a fashion show that the sewing school puts on annually, and was sewing school uniforms for a school district. She had requested a third sewing machine so she could hire even more help with sewing jobs, so a number of us donated funds privately so she could expand yet again!

Below: Bishol Gurung second from right, Jan, Kavita, Anita and sewing students 

We are so proud of all 

 the women who have turned their lives around, “one stitch at a time”.

And grateful to the Nepal Fashion Academy for their role in making this happen. 

There are more women waiting to join the Fashion Academy and start sewing, however we’ve reached our limit for this year’s budget in sewing scholarships. If you’d like to help send a deserving woman to sewing school, contact me at:

Jansprague2@gmail.com 

Namaste!

 

Nurturing A Flower Bud

 

Kopila- it’s a pretty word to say, and even more meaningful when you learn its meaning. Kopila- a flowering bud, something about to bloom. Often, in Nepal it’s a word used to describe a young person, a “kopila” a young person, with the potential for growth and limitless possibilities.

Walking through the front entrance of Kopila Nepal, I wasn’t sure what we would see. I knew this was a place where children were brought who had their childhoods stolen, who’s dreams for a loving and caring life had been shattered by domestic violence, by child trafficking, and by abusive adults. This was where the broken found shelter, love and help. We were met by bright sunlight shining through the front windows as Kavita and I were greeted by a house manager holding small bouquets of flowers out to us, greeting us with a smile and a Namaste. Children were busy reading, working on computers and chattering among themselves, pausing to look up at the strangers entering their home. A quick tour of clean and tidy rooms, walls decorated with educational charts and symbols of peace and hope. There was a cheerful atmosphere despite the ugly underlying reason the children were here- who wants to think someone would treat a child cruelly or act as if they have the right to make a slave out of a child?  Or discard them like trash because they are of no use to the adults who should be giving unconditional love? But please don’t turn away from reading this post. These children we were about to meet are Kopila. They get a chance to bloom again, and this time with nurturing care through this compassionate program.

Kopila calls itself a safe home. They are also a shelter program, a place where counseling and medical care is given. They offer mental health and social rehabilitation and advocate on behalf of marginalized people who often don’t have the ways or means to advocate for themselves. As we were introduced to the girls and women who found a haven here from gender violence and extreme poverty, stories coalesced. One young girl had been abused by male relatives for years. She became pregnant because of the abuse and was “discarded,” no longer of use. She is now at Kopila with her baby, getting much needed therapy and support. Another girl we met shared a similar background. Her toddler son sat on laps and moved among the circle of young girls who sat on the floor talking to us. Another was a victim of the tradition of preferring sons and rejecting female babies, Her mother had to leave her husband’s home when her baby was born a girl, not the boy her in-laws wanted, and forced to struggle on her own with a new baby. Others who suffered from physical disabilities were forced out of homes and treated like animals. One girl was beaten for having poor eyesight that made it difficult to perform certain tasks. There were also stories of the girls struggling with mental issues due to the childhood trauma they suffered. Self-harming, depression, selectively mute- all had found their way to Kopila and finally healing.

A nearly new baby was held and shushed by a woman who looked as if she came in from the wild, and in many ways she had, explained the house mother. She was found starved on the streets, suffering from all forms of abuse, mute and withdrawn, living among a rubble of trash. Brought to Kopila, she was healing - slowly. She had taken it upon herself to nurture the babies there, holding and walking with them until they drifted into a peaceful sleep.

Watching this scarred, rescued woman,  I felt such an upwelling of compassion for her, the newly born child, the suffering these women and girls have had to endure, but now they had a place to heal. “She does a good job with that baby,” I said to the house mother, who had just told me the background story of how the woman came to be at Kopila. “We say we are all mothers here,” she added.  Absolutely, I thought. Buddha said, at one time, over many lifetimes, we were all the mothers of each other. Perhaps that’s why there is so much compassion and love in the hearts and souls of women. 

Hands in Nepal is interested in supporting programs such as Kopila. We are happy to take donations and send them on to this wonderful organization. Our project manager Kavita has started her own way to help- she has employed 6 young women from Kopila in her bakery! They are learning a vocation there, and earning money. They are blossoming!

You can learn how to donate at:

Handsinnepal.org

To learn more about Kopila and see more photos of what they do, the house, and people involved in this wonderful program, go to: Kopilanepal.org.np

Home To School

 Last year our Project Manager Kavita Adhikari came to us with an idea for a program that we could support called Home To School. The concept was fairly simple. Because village families sometimes lack the funds for their children’s school uniforms and school supplies, those children do not go to school and instead work on the farm or other places. What if school supplies and fees could help those children go to school instead of staying home. Hence the phrase “Home to School”. The idea was initially brought to Kavita’s attention through a village official looking to get more village children in school and out of the fields. Kavita honed the idea to selecting students from the neediest families, those who have income disparities and difficulties of all sorts. Because we’re talking about a lot of children here, and Hands in Nepal only has funds for a part of that number, Kavita came up with a ranking depending on single parent households, no parent households, (think unhoused children or raised by a grandmother) poverty issues, low caste issues etc. children are selected using this type of ranking, and so we currently have 46 children from primary grades to secondary that we are able to help as long as we have the funds. 

Vvillage school where Home to School is being implemented 

Yesterday’s ceremony was humbling! Villagers from near and far came to see the strange lady from America, who would hand out the carefully prepared packages of school books, school stationary, a receipt saying the year’s school fee was paid, and collecting a separate package containing a new school uniform. Long speeches were made expressing gratitude to Hands and school officials, I was asked to get up and talk, which did with a full heart and dear Kavita trying to translate my own flowery words of gratitude and encouragement to parents to keep their children in school.

Kavita, owns and runs a bakery when not helping Hands in Nepal, made a box lunch for everyone that included samosas, chips and muffin. And a juice box! Very enjoyed by all!

Many of the Didis hung around after the meeting broke up for photo ops with the tall silver haired American lady! Me, in turn, loved taking photos of villagers with their Sunday best dresses, scarves, jewelry and “Bidis”on their foreheads. The packages we gave out are very heavy, they contained not only books and supplies with a dictionary and must have weight around 30+ pounds, I kid you not! Many villager s brought their baskets they use with a head rope to carry the heavy package back home. I was impressed by little grannies half my size strapping their baskets on their backs secured with the head around their foreheads-my Gish! All that weight held mostly by their necks. Nepal women are some of the strongest, inside and out, that I have ever met.

I’ll post some photos here. Enjoy,

 Please enjoy these videos of an amazing dance party put on for us by sweet students of Bal Sarathi in Kathmandu:

One Women’s Dream for 80 Children

 It’s no exaggeration to say that Mala Kharel has one very big dream. How can you provide a safe, secure and loving school for some of Kathmandu’s poorest children? She puzzled over this question and then put her ideas to work. Rent a big house and offer food, shelter and teachers. The children would come, and hence began Bal Sarahi. I first heard of this “street school” so called because most of the children she hoped to attract were living in extreme poverty. In fact many have parents who are street beggars. Education is not free in Nepal, you need to be able to buy a uniform and books. You need a tiffin (snack) bucket, food to put in it for your day at school, and you need parents willing to give you the day off from work-yep, in a country where trying to put food on a- well, at this level of poverty there is not a table to put food on- so let’s just say in order to have food - period, everyone needs to work. Mala’s dream was, convince parents and children that  coming to school and learning can help everyone eventually, in the long run, education means literacy. And being literate means more opportunity than begging. And so Bal Sarathi, Mala’s school for everyone for free, began. 

We started helping Mala about 10 years ago by donating what we could at Hands in Nepal when we could. The list is long to run a school for some 80 children, from preschool to grade 5. There’s the usual school expense like hiring teachers, a cook for daily meals, food and water. Water? There is no city piped water here so Mala needs to buy water brought in by truck, enough to cook, drink and wash with. 80 kids. Everyday.

Mala and I with a few of the super students at Bal Sarathi

There’s no end to the list of needs for a school that helps the poorest of the poor…

Keeping the water flowing is the easy problem of keeping this dream school going. There wasn’t enough money in the budget this year for every student to have their own workbook, so some had to share. There’s not enough in the budget to have a table for eating their daily meal, so children sit in the floor with their plate of rice and Dahl. Every month, Mala needs to pay her staff of 9 teachers, 2 helpers and her principal, pay the water bill and buy the food. But she does it, month by month. It’s never easy, she told me today, “There’s always something else we need. Sometimes I have to tell the teachers I can’t give them their full salary until we get more money, But we do it day by day and keep the doors open.”

You can see that ernest joy on the faces of the children as they labor over their workbooks. Or at least those who got a workbook. Each classroom had the proud work on exhibit of kids who take pride in their learning. Mala has a dream, and the children are at the center of her vision. It was easy to felt he infectious joy that flowed from the children,the teachers and Mala with her endless energy guiding all. It only took one amazing woman to get this  “free for all” school rolling, but it will take all of us to keep it going.

Enjoy these photos I took today. If you’d like to help us help Mala, you can donate on our website, where we have a PayPal button. You can also send a check made out to Hands in Nepal at PO Box 738, Santa Margarita 93453. Do you want to come to Nepal with me someday and help out at Bal Sarathi? Let me know! This is the type of deeply gratifying work that makes your heart fill with love. As the motto on the classroom wall I visited today said, “Servitude is the best religion”- true that!

Namaste!

Namaste Nepal!

 

Hey there! I made it. 5 days ago I left LAX in a 777, took a break in Chiang Mai, Thailand, caught up on sleep, ate some pad Thai and drank way too much Thai ice tea, got on an Air Asia air bus and flew from Chiang Mai to Kathmandu. Phew!

I did get off the air bus feeling pretty perky, the decent departure and arrival time in the afternoon made me feel some what normal instead of a jet-lagged zombie. It was an easier shift to go from mellow Thailand to another chill country, both with a strong Buddha vibe. The night before I left we had a terrific thunder and lightening rain storm, the sky dragons were talking, as my friend Karma would say, and I lay in bed wondering if big planes can fly in thunderstorms, having found out last time I was in a pre-monsoon thunderstorm, the smaller planes can’t. All planes took off this morning, including our “Airbus” which is just as it says-a bus that flies, with no frills or food or even instant coffee. Thankfully, my sweet Thai hotel made me a box lunch before I left  to take with me, along with a banana and a juice box, just like I was going to school.

Bhupendra, who has been a constant helper and friend to Hands in Nepal, was at the other end, waiting patiently with all the locals, on the edge of the 

Parking lot, waving when he saw me and ran to grab the cart with my 53 pd. suitcase and smaller but not much lighter, carry-on. We caught up on news as his driver dodged in and out of the crazy traffic that zigs and zags with no rhyme or reason. Amazedly, despite no traffic rules other than common sense, everyone seems to avoid hitting each other.  Boudha gate, where we dropped off, was crazy-crowded, people clogged the official entrance, so, pulling the heavier suitcase to part the sea of people, me tagging behind as best I could, Bhupendra cut a trail through a side alley and we broke through the crowds to the great Stuppa plaza.

Nepali New Year, like in Thailand, started today, shops, business and schools shut their doors for one day, and it felt as if everyone had taken a holiday to the great stuppa. A endless herd of people circled clockwise around its base, stopping to talk, buy ice creams or boba tea, and light a candle.

Some celebrated by turning the great prayer wheels at the plaza’s center. I ran across 3 “Didis” from a hill tribe dressed in their Sunday best, colorful saris and their best jewelry and head scarves. We smiled and Namasted, I gushed over their dress and how beautiful they looked and asked if I could take their photo.Of course they obliged, it was a rare treat for them to get to see how they looked in picture mode.

By now, having done my own Kora (the Tibetan word for circling the Stuppa), knees aching and wanting a lie down, I said goodbye to Bhupendra and diverted off to my hotel, the cozy Tibetan run Mandala. 

Tomorrow will be a full day of Hands work-visiting Mala at Bal Sarahi school, meeting with Kelsang’s wife, meeting our successful engineer graduate Anata and seeing another Hands friend, Govinda.

It will be my one full day in ancient Kathmandu before flying again, this time on to Pokhara and Kavita, where we have mucho work to do during my time there. 

Time for rest! Good-night yak, good-night monks, goodnight everyone!