Roshika
Helping Hands

Newsletter 2019

Namaste 
A recent trip to Nepal and Khalte provided a lovely opportunity to reconnect with the schools and families and to gain insight into the current situation there.

While there has been a lot of progress since the 2015 earthquake devastated the area, there is still much to be done. Many of the schools still need a lot of help as restoration and rebuilding has not been completed. Some are still just corrugated tin sheds, which are far from ideal as a centre of learning. It also appears that schools are not getting sufficient funding from the government and some are not even getting enough of the basic textbooks for the students.

Over the last few years we have been able to supply 8 schools in the Khalte region (pre-school and grades 1 to 3) with thousands of exercise books and pencils, soccer balls, uniforms and even a few computers. 

These have helped the students obtain better results on the national exams and enabled more students to go on to higher education.  On our recent visit to the valley, we asked young girls what they wanted to be when they grow up and the answers were delightful: doctors, researchers, teachers and business people!  

Through recent discussions with school teachers and principals, we were able to reconfirm how valuable our support is and how much they need us to continue supplying exercise books and pencils, and athletic supplies. 

For 2019, RHH will continue to support our current 8 schools. This semester we were able to buy about 3000 books and 1500 pencils.  However, with costs going up and the CDN $ going down, our purchasing power has unfortunately decreased somewhat unfortunately.  We will continue to look for ways to get the most value out of donations. 

It also appears that there is a real problem with trafficking in young girls to India. Dedicated NGOs are continually rescuing young Nepal girls on their way to or already in India to work in the sex trade.   We firmly believe that the better educated we can help them become, the less likely they are to be part of that problem.
Many thanks to all of you who have so generously supported Roshika Helping Hands (RHH) over the years with your donations and purchases from the handicraft/jewelry sales. Without you, there would be no RHH.