This project was the brainchild of a lovely young girl Amelia Van Ewijk. I think you will agree that her commitment to helping the children at the Sai Home is so heart-warming – here is Amelia’s story.
My name is Amelia Van Ewijk and I go to Telopea Park School in year 9. In year 9 and 10, students at Telopea complete what is called a Personal Project. The idea is to create and carry out our very own project. For my project I have created a fundraiser to raise money for a charity called Dharmik Australia who help Nepalese children out of poverty. I chose this as a project because the founders of Dharmik are friends of mine and both my father and sister have been to Nepal and told me about the lovely children in the orphanages and how poor the living stardards are. I felt like I wanted to do all I could to help the children live a better life.
In Nepal during the dry season around December living is hard because they don't get much rain and food and drinking water is scarce. And because most of Nepal's electricity is hydro-electric based they normally only get electricity for about 6 hours of the day. This means that Christmas time in Nepal is one of the hardest times of the year.
This year, as my personal project, I am going to bring Nepal to Australia and have a Nepali Christmas with a few friends. Basically for 48 hours, we are going to live without food and for 18 hours of each day, without electricity and running water. The idea is to try to re create the kind of conditions the Nepali children of the SAI home would be faced with on Christmas Day. The Christmas gift to the children of the SAI home will be all the money that I have raised for Dharmik.
Footnote: Amelia raised over $600
