Sarah and D finish on a high!

The final 3 days of Sarah and D’s program in Nepal involved visits to a couple of drop in centres operated by CWISH, and culminated in an outing and picnic for the kids from these centres.

On Tuesday we visited the centre in Basundhara, just off the ring road at the northern end of Kathmandu. Most of the kids attending this centre were girls ranging in ages from 8 to 16. They had prepared a small role play/drama for us which involved a number of the girls acting out their home lives – all of the kids who attend these centres are domestic labourers meaning they work for and live with middle to upper class families in Kathmandu. They did a second drama which showed an attempt by local police to convince a family that they should allow their child ‘servant’ to attend school. It was very touching to see these children recreate aspects of their own lives, and made the impact of their realities that much harder.

Sarah and D came well prepared to inject a little bit of fun into the lives of these kids and so they pulled out some mega colouring books, crayons and textas and started handing them out to everyone, even the older kids were desperate for their chance! Of course colouring in can’t be completely enjoyed without biscuits and chips/crisps and the girls had organised some of these as well – the kids were in heaven. Last activity for the day was a basic alphabet quiz in which the kids had to give 3 words in English for each of the letters or the alphabet. They did really well and had loads of fun in the process, especially as every time an animal was named Sarah would proceed to imitate the noise of that animal!

Wednesday saw us carry out a similar program at a drop-in centre at Gyaneshwor, nearby to Kathmandu city centre. There were more boys at this centre (about half) and the age range was again about 8 to 16. We followed a similar program at this centre but also managed to fit in some singing – “heads, shoulders, knees and toes…” and also a game of Simon Says.


The highlight of the week for kids from both centres, and I think the highlight of the whole trip for Sarah and D, was Thursday’s picnic program. We organised a bus to take all of the kids from both centres to Buddhanilkanta to a park area situated at the very northern tip of Kathmandu at the foot of the hills. Sarah and D had brought badminton racquets, mini golf sets, balls, skipping ropes and even a limbo set that played music! The kids went wild and it really was amazing to see them all having so much fun. It really does remind us that kids are fundamentally the same anywhere in the world, they just need to be given the chance to be kids.

Both of the girls were challenging the kids to skipping contests and badminton with varying degrees of success and loads of fun was had by all. After a couple of hours of games lunch arrived. We had arranged to have small packed lunches delivered and they were devoured in no time, fortunately there was enough for anyone who wanted them to have seconds. In the early afternoon storm clouds began to form so we piled back on to the bus and headed home. Soon after it rained heavily which was a welcome chance to cool off.

This truly was a magic day for the kids from these drop-in centres. They all work as domestic helpers and had probably never experienced any kind of outing before in their lives. I am sure it is a day they will remember forever and I have a feeling Sarah and D feel the same.

On that note, we must say a big “thank you” to Sarah and D for taking 3 weeks to come to Nepal and do so many wonderful things with the various groups we work with here. They had brought a lot of resources with them which they kindly donated and they also bought many more things for the kids whilst they were here. Their generosity and passion for what they were doing will be remembered long after they have returned to London and hopefully, they will be able to return again in the not too distant future.