Children's Trust Nepal

Our involvement with Nepal began back in 2003 when our founder, Alder Allen, travelled to Kathmandu to teach English to students at one of the colleges out there.

“The experience was amazing.  The Nepalese are a warm-hearted, hard-working and honourable people.  They accepted me immediately and made me feel part of their family.”

Nepal is sandwiched between the two giants of India and China, and is one of the least developed and most impoverished countries in the world. The vast majority of the population live in rural areas, where most roads are little more than rocky tracks and there is little in the way of even basic facilities. Against this backdrop, many parents struggle to earn enough to be able to feed and educate their children, so for any orphans the outlook was particularly bleak.

One of the students she met there was Babin Lama, and when he graduated from the college he decided he wanted to do something to help the most needy children in his home region. Always a lover of children, Alder was keen to be involved. And so the story began.

“When I met Babin ‘Bam’ Lama and (his future wife) Gita I was so impressed by their love of children and commitment to starting a children’s home.”

In July 2004 we rented a house in the small town of Dhading, 36 miles/58 kilometres north-west of the capital Kathmandu.  Ten local children, mostly orphans, were invited to become the first members of the Bethany Children’s Home family. There was a further addition in January 2006 with the birth of Babin and Gita’s son Joshua.

In 2010 we decided to raise enough funds to build our own Home, and bought a plot of land just ten minutes walk from the high street and the children’s schools. The Nepalese style is rather extravagant and much more colourful – certainly rather different from here in the UK! Our building was designed by a local architect to our own specification and is capable of accommodating up to twenty children. Over the next two years the building rose out of the ground and in May 2012, amid much excitement, the children were able to move into their new home.