We are so very happy to congratulate Sawaswati on her graduation as an Army cadet! “Dearest Sawaswati, may you have a fulfilling and successful career and make deep friendships and discover your strengths and gifts in your life ahead. We love you and we are proud of you!”

Sawaswati was one of our first children at Annapurna Self Sustaining Children Home and we have supported her through school education and completion of the SEE and most recently through the Army officer training academy. With this opportunity Sawaswati now has a real career and opportunity to create a successful life for herself. We are also delighted that she continues to give back to our Home with her time and energy and of course joining us for “Family” festivals. It is with real joy that we witness our children graduate into responsible adult lives – this is the outcome we aspire to with all our children.

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Our Self-Sustaining approach is so helpful in this time of lockdown - stay safe and healthy everyone!                                                                We are very thankful for our self-sustaining initiatives that have created our farm and therefore a good food supply. It has also meant that our older children can get outside and help us with our gardening and gain outdoor exercise and sunshine as well has very useful life skills while we are still experiencing lockdown in Nepal - the lockdown seems like it will continue all throughout June! But we are happy to report we are safe and healthy and very much appreciate the hard work of Sarada and all our mothers to keep our children in good health and spirits.

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Like everyone around the world we are confined to being "home" and taking care to wash hands and be healthy during this COVID-19 virus time. We are very HAPPY???? that we already have a good system of hygiene and cleaning :-) Plus with children in different ages we can continue home school work as older children teach the younger ones. But the very best is our 3 acres farm that is providing us with vegetables and grains - today we were harvesting (as farming is allowed as an essential service) and of course our cows giving us milk and curd - we are so lucky! The activity of harvesting is good for our children learning essential life skills as well some fun and physical exercise. We hope that all our friends and families stay healthy and safe during this time. Thank you to everyone who supports us, without your help we would not feel so safe and comfortable in this time if crisis.  

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Our beautiful girls performed several cultural dance pieces at the Pokhara Industrial Festival - we are so proud that we can give back to our community with our heart centered gifts ❤ Cultural dance is very important in Nepalese community and our children – girls and boys – receive regular dance and singing lessons to develop their skills and to gain the understanding and wisdom that such cultural arts convey.

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2006 began a journey of women (in Jutpani village, Chitwan, Nepal) being supported by HandswithHands to find their empowerment through a combination of microcredit, skills training and encouraging mentoring. This photomontage captures glimpses of the evolution of this Shree Uday Savings & Credit cooperative 2006 to 2019. This project began with 25 participants and now involves hundreds. Children have grown up and now are participating and contributing members. Shree Uday Savings & Credit Cooperative is now an important part of their local village community and recognised as a positive example in the District by the Chitwan Cooperative office. Initiated by Kira Kay; facitited by Shila Pandey & Ram KC; funded by HandswithHands and empowered by the many women in Jutpani village ????

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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Kira Kay, de oprichtster van Hands with Hands Duitsland & Oostenrijk, is weer in Nepal geweest in oktober en november 2019. Zij is sinds de start, 14 jaar geleden, intensief betrokken geweest bij de opzet en continuering van ons Annapurna Self Sustaining Children Home. Huismanager en oppermoeder Sarada en Kira zijn de twee energieke drijfveren van dit grote project en ik heb enorme bewondering voor beiden. Zoals jullie lazen in eerdere nieuwsbrieven hebben we in de loop der jaren op één plek diverse aangrenzende stukken land aangekocht waar we ons nieuwe eco kinderhuis willen bouwen. Nieuwsbrief_Nepal_2019_-2_Hands_with_Hands_Holland.pdf

 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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