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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Februari 2019 hebben we het Annapurna self-sustaining children home bij Pokhara weer opgezocht. We werden hartelijk ontvangen door Sarada, de 34 kinderen en 4 huismoeders. Het is alsof je in een grote familie komt met 16 broers en 18 zussen waarbij de oudste kinderen ook extra taken hebben in de keuken en het huishouden.Er zijn zowel de oude kleine groentetuinen met koeien (op 2 minuten lopen) als de grote groentetuinen en fruitgaard op 15 minuten lopen.

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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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Our Annapurna Children Home Home teenage movie team have written, acted, filmed and directed this short film - for those who do not understand Nepali language the story is about finding your inner strength and finding out that getting angry and trying to beat the other means you lose your inner peace and power so the best is to be good brothers and simply hang out together (the film style is classic Nepali Bollywood!) it is clear that Sarada's counseling is showing rewards. Great film Ravi K. Chhetri & Shuvas & Sakar & Nisan

Tihar is a wonderful and special festival in Nepal. It is 5 days of celebration that is concluded with Bhai Tika - a beautiful ritual between brother and sister - both celebrating the family connection and reaffirming the bond of support between brother and sister. In our Home of many brothers and sisters this is a very special and fun day! The tradition is that the sisters make a yummy tasty plate of sweet favourite foods for their brother and give a blessing for good health, safe life and abundance and the brother returns the blessings and gifts the sister money or something that can support her life. Here is a glimpse of our special day.

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With much joy we share this new video of our Annapurna Self-Sustaining Children Home created by Sarada Basnet, our wonderful Thulo mother and president! This short 15 mins video gives you a real glimpse into our everyday life and you can see the alive joy that is very present in our Home We are very proud of all that we help ourselves in self sustaining ways - and - we do need ongoing financial support, especially to help our education of children all donations are very welcomed and very well utilised!

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