Yes. A visit to your sponsored child is a rewarding way to see the benefits of your contributions. You must contact us at least 2 weeks before your intended departure date. We can arrange and provide someone to accompany you and act as interpreter on the day of your visit. There will be a fee of $50 per day to cover taxis, lunch and guide.
There are a few issues I need to explain to you around this. Basically a letter is no problem perhaps with a photo of you and your family in it. You are unlikely to get a reply to your letter unless we are doing a bulk mail exercise with all the kids at their school.
In Nepal parcels don’t get delivered. They arrive at the central post office. The person getting it has to go there with public transport and join sometimes a long queue and it can take half a day to collect a parcel. Next if it has any value there can be charges and taxes to pay which can be more than the value of the contents of the parcel. We operate on a shoe string budget, and paradoxically a parcel sent from overseas can bring more cost than benefit. So the problem with parcels is the time and the cost.
Letters can be sent to:
Ms Yuzeena Shrestha 9841867044
(for Child Name – Child ID)
PO Box 21004
Thamel Chowk, Kathmandu Nepal
In the children’s homes, we cannot favour one child over another. There are over twenty kids under one roof and because different sponsors would send different gifts it would be unfair for one child to receive a gift and another child receives no gift. In Nepal, poor people usually don’t celebrate birthdays. What happens is that each year in October everyone gets new clothes. We bulk buy so that all the kids get new clothes. Apart from that gifts need to be for the home not for one child.
We have a list of what each home needs, a wish list. The best gift you can do is choose an item from that list and give it and then we will tell everyone “this gift came from this child's sponsor”. Example, the boys want an iron to iron their school uniform. This way your gift is really needed and helps directly. You can give a portion of a gift also, so you can give $20 towards something.
Sometimes people offer to give us gifts to take to Nepal with us. This can sometimes be great, and other times not so great. For example, Nepal is so close to China and India that clothes there are much cheaper than they are here and you can get good quality also. So usually it does not make sense to take clothes from Australia. Every case is different, so please ask us and we will tell you truthfully whether a particular gift from Australia is a good idea or not. An example of a good idea is an English language DVD which is of an easy standard and not something like tele-tubbies.
This might take another 12-18 months, but with the older kids 12+, we want to set up e-mail links between sponsor and child. This will be an educational, inexpensive way to build cross cultural connections to benefit both groups
