A 4am start today to support Sagar & Rabina participating in the 42 km marathon! We have had a sportif week with our youngest girls also winning awards for the sports participation - Sujata and Samicha and Puspa and Puja. We are thankful for everyone who is helping us create such a nourishing environment for our children to grow and develop all their skills.

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 I am feeling super proud and thankful to the women from our Jutpani Shree Uday Savings and credit cooperative who have created and coordinated an awareness program about violence towards women and about gender equality and the importance of encouraging girls to stay in school. These women who have truly empowered and uplifted their own lives themselves and now shine the light to others in their community. They also engage men to talk on women rights and the importance of education by co-creating community based events that further their own learned experiences. The more we support one another to become our best selves the more abundance and kindness we have in our world.

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YaY❣️ We celebrated the "First Stone" ceremony of our Annapurna Eco Village Building project which will be our Forever Home to our Annapurna Children Home here in Pokhara, Nepal. This project has been a dream in the making for several years as many of you will already know :-) Now the real life building steps will be unfolding over the next months and years to bring into reality longterm housing for our children and mothers on our organic farmland ???? So many people have been important contributors to this creation ???? On November 14th at 9.15am (an auspicious date/time according to our vedic Astrologer guru) we gathered on the building site with members of the local community of Batulechour, who have been long term supporters with special guests Krishna Thapa & Beni Basnet, (also long term supporters!) along with the gentleman who kindly sold us the land and believed in our vision plus our architect building team from Abari, Nripal & Asmita, to bear witness, bless and open the building process. It was heart touching to listen to the speeches made in support of our vision, encouraging us to continuing building this dream - literally now! While we prepared the location for the blessing the Abari team continued the important process of laying out and marking the initial building sites so the blessing occurred in conjunct with the first real action unfolding. This is a truly important dream/vision for myself and Sarada - as we have cared for and loved the children under our protection the past nearly 14 years we have hoped and dreamed of providing a Forever Home that will continue to provide safe sanctuary. We hope to also provide a healthy building example to our local community by using as much as possible eco-friendly materials and earthquake resilient methods as well as a beautiful Home for our children. It will take time to complete this vision and continued helping hands will be required but for right now, this step, my heart is deeply and proudly content. Thank you to everyone who has made this step possible, may you feel this profound blessing along with us!

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 Saturday Picnic! ???? A quiet forest location with a secluded lake that we shared with only a few other families - thankfully we managed to get the largest and best spot for our extended big family! A picnic in Nepal is quite an experience and takes a lot of preparation and planing ???? We take along everything, including firewood, pots & pans, drinking water and all food items needed and plates and, and!!! We piled everything into the bus (thank you again to our Pragati school for allowing us the use of the bus and your cook) plus all our children, extra friends, some of our board members plus we stopped to pick up Hajur Amma ???? oh and of course the sound box for dancing! Once we arrived the many hands helped carrying all the items up the hill to our picnic location whereupon the cook started up the fire and had breakfast and tea was underway very quickly to satisfy the hungry tummies :-) Then of course dancing and playing unfolded the next hours along with the walk down to the lake to explore the fish and nature. With many hands helping our cook prepare the fried chicken, chicken hot pot, mushroom, cauli, paneer, achar papadam, rice and more we truly had a feast (both lunch and dinner). Plus our graduates (Sabin, Pritam, Rita, Asha & Sawaswati) organised a surprise birthday cake for Mamu Sarada's birthday which added to the fun and excitement of the day! We finally at sunset packed everything back into the bus, including some very tired wee monkeys, and headed home. Very satisfied that we have added some more wonderful memories to our lives ????

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I am feeling inspired, uplifted & with my heart overflowing. Today was spent celebrating with women friends in Chitwan - some whom I met already 13 years ago. We began back then with a small step of supporting women to uplift their life situation - after an initial pilot phase we evolved into a sustainable legal structure for the long term. Today we celebrated the 10 years AGM of our official Shree Uday Savings and Credit cooperative, the basis of our microcredit and skill development in Jutpani, Chitwan. Yay!!! It has been such a heart warming journey to witness these women (& a few men too!) discover their potential. ???? As I watched these empowered and confident women today share their stories, speak in public, arranging this entire picnic AGM program utilising so much from our own members - including vehicles transporting people, eggs, meat and vegetables all from our own entrepreneurs. Witnessing also the next generation stepping up and utilising these evolved benefits and even more importantly co-creating a supportive and empowering environment for the next children rising up. I am touched and heartened that the original women from our very first outreach had the courage to trust and explore their capability with the guidance of Shila Pandey & Ram Kc and pave the way for the success we celebrated today. It has taken many hands joining together to support this development and many small steps over the years - I heartfully thank every person who has contributed and supported us all in this ! May you feel the blessings ???? flowing through my words here with profound gratefulness ???? Enjoying the dancing with everyone today I made a wish that we continue this dance of supporting and working together well into the future ????

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Celebrating Bhai Tikka during our Tihar festival - a heartful blessing ceremony between brothers and sisters! With our big family this is always a highlight of our Tihar festival time as our sisters (and mothers!) prepare a sweet feast for our brothers and guests. Then the blessings ceremony unfolds with its many rituals along with much laughter and shared eating.

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This week we celebrated the rite of passage 'Bratabandha' for 9 of our boys (Sofal, Sagar, Samyog, Ujiwal, Ravi, Sushil, Shuvas, Bushan & Sonam) at our Annapurna Children Home. This is a sacred Hindu ritual that makes the passage from child to young man and includes counseling and guidance from the priests and elder men in the family (in our case it was some of our school teachers!) including a secret mantra to guide them in life. The ritual includes several steps which symbolize taking care of ones body, mind and energy, stepping out into the world but also returning to family, respecting and caring for them. The sisters, aunties and mothers prepare a feast to symbolize sustaining the young man in his life journey. It also includes enjoying the feasting (which included ice-cream from and many blessings too! It was so heart touching to see these boys/young men reflect and take in this rite of passage to witness and share - profound moments in life journeys ♥♥ We also wish to extend a very heartfelt thank you to the community members in Batulechour who came and celebrated with us and passed on so many blessings to our young men – plus we make a special thank you to Beni Basnet for his encouragement and sincere input for our continued success and future developments! With this heartfelt and good support our children evolve and mature into healthy young adults who contribute back into the community :-) We also extend a very warm thank you to all our board members and neighbours who gave a great helping hand in so many ways making this celebration such a wonderful success!

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A heartfelt happy Nepali New year 2076 to all our friends. We wish all of us a joyful, abundant and successful year! Our girls visited the Bindhyabasini Temple early in the morning and our boys went for a very early morning (they left at 3,20am!) hike up to the Peace Stupa to watch the sun rise - all of them arriving back for breakfast feeling very blessed! We have also enjoyed a lovely New Years Day program provided by the Manipal Medical Teaching college 1st & 2nd year Doctor students - they converted one of their classrooms into a cinema and screened "Finding Dory" and provided some yummy snacks too! Plus the Sri Lankan students have also same New Year and they provided us with new sports equipment and played with our children on their big playing fields before driving us home in their college bus - a wonderful day, and a big thank you! We look forward to meet many of you our friends this Nepali year 2076.

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Happy Sunday everyone! We share some smiles and laughter from our side to you all With such a big family we do have a lot of playmates and options for enjoying each other and being physically active with table tennis, badminton, monkey bars, dancing and much more - thank you to everyone who has been supporting and visiting us! And thank you Liz Arcus for these gorgeous in action photos please visit us again!

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I am once again deeply touched, inspired & encouraged by witnessing the empowerment that has unfolded the past 13 years with our women friends involved in microcredit and skills development in Chitwan, Nepal. Today (Nov 16) I was gifted a "Token of Love" at the annual general meeting of our microcredit cooperative - which illuminates my understanding of what has unfolded ???? We believed in the illiterate and poorest women, that they had the intelligence and capacity to lift themselves out of poverty into being contributing members in their community. They have far surpassed my expectations and continue to inspire my/our efforts to uplift other women. When we support one another, when we believe in our innate capacity and more importantly - when we come together to support one another - miracles do happen! ???? We had the pleasure of listening to heartening talks by various members of our cooperative who are succeeding in many areas in the wider community from international Tai Quan Dao competitions, village/Ward representation, successful business development and more - wow! ???? And then we made our way back to our hotel in one of our members' auto-rickshaw (she has upgraded from one single bicycle rickshaw previously to having an auto rickshaw and additional drivers!) If you would like to help us continue creating opportunities for skill development, trainings & microcredit outreach please be in touch or donate

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