Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
We are a registered charity, a non profit organisation and a voluntary organisation that invests almost 100% of our funds into the education and care of child labourers. As an example, we spent 98.2% of our income on running Little Gems Hostel and supporting the care and education of former child labourers.
We believe that our main achievement as a charity is in arranging volunteer opportunities that benefit both the volunteer, our beneficiaries, the local community and the environment. We offer low prices because we want volunteering to be accessible to everyone and benefit as many people as possible. We believe that the true value of volunteering is how much a volunteer can gain from the experience and how much it can benefit the local community.
We employ people on the basis that they have a good understanding of poverty in Nepal. We also give preference to former students who understand from their own experiences what it is like to be living in poverty and working in dangerous conditions to survive. Our field co-ordinator, Rabindra, has many years of experience dealing with volunteers and understands their needs, expectations and how different travelling to Nepal can be for them. He offers support and advises volunteers on what is culturally acceptable behaviour. We have 6 local staff that are paid to run and manage Little Gems Hostel which is partly funded through the help of volunteers who come to Nepal. Rabindra is our Field Coordinator and Warden of the hostel. Keshari is our mother and housekeeper who love the children as her own. Ishwori, Manshova and Nirmala are big sisters from the village who also happen to be pretty good teachers.
We work with schools and hostels and advise them and try to support them where possible. We recycle old clothes and books by donating them to less well off hostels and teach the children we sponsor to help other children by managing small projects to meet the needs of children less well off than themselves. As an example, three of our sponsored girls were asked to visit a local disabled hostel to find out what they desperately needed. We gave the girls a little bit of money to buy the items and to donate them to the hostel. Along the way, they made some friends and learnt a little bit of sign language!
We do not import any of our goods. We purchase only from local shops, suppliers and producers except where items are unavailable in the local market such as OUP English language text books. For the most part; volunteers spend much of their money in the local shops, cyber cafes and family restaurants which helps economic development at a local level. Our volunteers live with local families or within a hostel or school. The cost of living (food and rent) is given to people in the local community.
Nepal is famous for its natural beauty and it would be a great loss if volunteer tourism leads to its demise. We therefore ask volunteers to respect the environment and reduce their impact in any way that they can. We are an online charity that is boundless. Without an office, we reduce everything to a website and for the most part, paperless communication (email / telephone). This not only helps reduce administration costs but helps us reduce our impact upon the environment.
In Nepal, we operate in the villages where the lifestyle is conducive towards protecting the environment. Food is naturally grown and eaten. Most people are subsistent farmers and live without many of the facilities that are responsible for damaging the environment. There are no facilities for recycling plastic bottles and so we reuse the few we get as drinking bottles for the children. For the most part, we filter water and collect it in a water tank. We only get tapped water for a 2 or 3 hours a day which means that we must manage our supply efficiently. Hence, the water tank! Much of the electricity supply in Nepal is hydropower as a result of large scale development projects which is a safe and clean supply of energy. Other than powering computers for learning and lights we have very little use for electricity which reduces our dependency upon it considerably.
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
