About the Children...

I desire to help the children shift their identity from the belief “life is a struggle” to one where grace, ease, fun and magic abound. As a means of reflecting that change I have chosen a small village in Nepal, and I desire to create a Heaven on Earth village. The village is situated about thirty miles from Kathmandu and has a population of approximately two thousand people with about five hundred children. In this village, eighty percent of the children have no shoes. In order to get to school, many of the children, some as young as six years, must walk about three and a half miles and cross a river - but the river has no bridge.
  
Forty percent of the children go to secondary school and only half finish school. There is no free education in Nepal and parents must pay about thirty dollars a month to cover books, stationary and uniforms. Given that the income of an individual is approximately two hundred dollars a year, it is not difficult to see why so few children finish school. The adult literacy rate in Nepal is fifty-five percent. In the village, only about ten percent can read and write and the majority can only write their name and address.

Most of the parents are farmers, working twelve-hour days in the fields. Farms are small and yields are very affected by rain-fall. Parents must carry the products nearly six miles by foot to the nearest market to sell. Summer months are particularly trying as the monsoons make transporting goods even more difficult. Without irrigation, flooding is a persistent challenge. There is no drinking water on a consistent basis, as water sources are not managed.

It is estimated by the United Nations Organization that fifty percent of the children in Nepal are malnourished. In the village, most go to school without breakfast because both parents are already in the fields from six in the morning. There is no prenatal and postnatal care; only fifty percent of infants survive the first year of life. Ninety percent of births are home deliveries. It is a four-hour walk to transport a pregnant woman or injured person to where a bus or ambulance can access them. If debilitated, someone has to carry the woman or injured for these four hours.

Finally, the houses, made from clay, rarely have even one tiny window, nor do they have fireplaces for heating and cooking. Fires are built on the floor without any form of ventilation. As a consequence, not only do the houses smell of smoke but respiratory diseases are rampant and the life expectancy is only 52.
  

Meet Vona's Angels
Finally, Vona herself has personally taken on two orphans, Bijay and Jayah, two brothers whom she is sponsoring through boarding school. With as little as $1,200 per year for each child, they are covered for tuition, room and board at the Little Angels' School in Hattiban, Lalitpur, Nepal.

Vona had the following experience with Jayah once when she was visiting the boys and their surrogate family.

"One day during an outing with Jayah I bought him a bag of candy - it was the first time he had ever seen candy. The child clutched the bag of candy all day, unopened, untouched. Puzzled, I was awestruck to witness that he did not take any for himself until he returned later that day to share it with his surrogate Napalese mother, Kamala, and her family. Only after he had shared his treasures did he take a candy for himself. He was six years at that time."

Below are photos of the brothers, one taken when Vona first met the boys and the other taken after six months in school.

Bijay and Jayah when Vona met them the first time.

Bijay and Jayah after six months in school.

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