Jan’s visit to Nepal

Recently a practice nurse called Jan got in contact, she wanted to visit our ladies in Nepal.  Read about her experiences here.

Jan with Bina, our Nepali manager, and her family

Our goats have had babies!

Yesterday one of our goats at Grace Women’s Home gave birth to two baby kids.  A perfect start to the new year and a cause of great excitement for the women and children living at the home.

Our Home is Open!

Today, July 4th, our ladies moved into our new Grace Women’s Home on the outskirts of Kathmandu – we are so excited for them!  Three women, four children and our new home manager, Shubhadra,  have relocated and there will be more women arriving over the next few weeks.  We have 11 rooms for them as well as a kitchen and meeting room.

There are plans to set up a bio-dynamic farm on the land and we hope the women will be a strong support to one another – all of them have endured great hardship.

Our first residents

We still require some funding so if you think you could commit to giving £10/month to keep this home running then please get in contact: anna@wwr-nepal.org

Thank you!

Mission Statement

I have just added a mission statement for our new Grace Women’s Home to this website. You’ll find it here.

Grace Women’s Home Mission Statement

Sad news of a robbery

Sadly the home of one of our women was robbed.  Subhadra lost her clothes, cooking pots and gas stove.  She has nothing left.  Please do pray for her; we are doing our best to help.

A thank you from one of our women

This lovely letter has just arrived from the daughter of one of the women we help in Kathmandu. The English isn’t perfect, but I’m sure you will sense the deep gratitude that she conveys. Thanks to all our supporters who make it possible for us to help families like this.

We want to give thank from our family that your family have support us to pay rent.  But if you had not we will be at the street somewhere wandering.  Thank a lot again.  So, in this letter I want to tell you somethings about my family.  We have five members of our family…. First my Father and Mother, they were separated when I was small.  So, my Mum was always worried and wandering about our life.  Many problems we face in our life, because of that my Mum get depression diseases, she will not know what we tell to her and also she can’t express her feeling but somehow she is healed by Lord Jesus Christ.  Now, she carried little things to the road ways and sell and earn some money, but am very scared and worried of her life because she had diseases….and no one to look after her but by the grace of God and by your help she is OK, so thank you again…..I have express some of my family problem, please pray for us, we need a lot of prayer for my family….We are really joyful and thankful for your great help.

Congratulations to Samajhdari

WWR sends its congratulations to Equal Access Nepal, the makers of radio program Samajhdari, that has just won the One World Media Special Award.  The program highlights the issues vulnerable women, just like those we help, face in Nepal. 

Samajhdari (meaning “Mutual Understanding”) is a 30-minute weekly radio programme in Nepal that regularly reaches up to one million listeners. It aims to cover the correlation between violence against women and HIV/AIDS from the listener’s point of view, providing discussion and advice on situations that affect real people – and particularly women.

Every programme begins with a real dilemma that a listener has faced. These dilemmas have much to do with both violence against women and HIV/AIDS – such as, “I am a sex worker and if I say no to my clients’ demands, they beat me. What can I do?” or “My husband forces me to have sex when I don’t want to. How can I say no?”

The presenter then brings in a range of voices to comment on the issue, including other listeners and experts from the field. One pioneering element is the twelve community reporters who go into rural areas and collect much of the content that is then used for broadcast. These women are all survivors of violence, and this gives them an unrivalled insight into the dilemmas being discussed.

See http://www.equalaccess.org.np/samajhdari for more information.

A new assistant in Nepal

We are pleased that Subhadra, one of the women we currently support and herself a single mother, will be joining Bina in Nepal as her new assistant. She will help with running errands and visiting and encouraging the other ladies we support.

Subhadra has been a single mother for a long time, her husband didn’t bother to come and pick her up from the hospital after she gave birth to her daughter! 

Subhadra’s daughter is now about 19 years old and is studying to be a nurse in Tansen at a mission hospital. Subhadra was incredibly proud of her and showed me a beautiful photo of her daughter looking very smart in a nurse’s uniform. Subhadra herself seemed like a wise Christian woman and very thankful for how WWR had helped her.

 We thought all this experince and success would be great for some of our younger and newly-single mothers to hear and sensed that Subhadra would be a good support to them. We will employ her to visit the women when Bina is busy and deliver items or small amounts of money to them as need be, we hope she will pray with them too.

Wise Subhadra

Help WWR mark International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day

Today, 8th March 2010, marks the centenary year of International Women’s Day and Women Without Roofs – Nepal would like you to invite you to remember all the women in Nepal we help.   Recently we have begun supporting several new women and this is a story about just one of them:

 

Meet Uma

Uma with her family

 She is 31 yrs old and has 3 children. 11 yrs daughter, 7 yrs boy and 6 years boy.  Her husband left her about 5 yrs ago and took her 6 yrs son with him.  Her husband has another wife.   Now she is living with just 2 of her children.  She works at a carpet factory and lives in one room and cooks on a kerosene stove and has no good bedding for sleep.  Her daughter goes to school but she does not have money for her 7 yrs boy to go to school, so he does not go to school.  She needs also support from WWR.

Womenswear for WWR

Renee, one of our trustees, will shortly be leaving for a visit to Kathmandu and it would be fantastic if she could take some gifts to the women who have so little.  Almost all of the women have never owned new clothes and we would love to provide them this basic luxury, that we take for granted.  We would be hugely grateful, if you our supporters, could purchase just one new item of clothing, perhaps a t-shirt, pair of socks or cardigan and send it to Renee (or give to Anna or Marilyn) for her to take to the women.  Perhaps you could select something for them next time you do your supermarket shop, it need not be expensive, for instance M&S sell fairtrade t-shirts for just £5.

Particulars

1. Clothing should be between the UK sizes of 10 to 16 and sizes 12 and 14 would be most useful.

2.  Clothing should be new, we know you probably have lots of 2nd-hand clothing we could pass on, but we would really like to treat the women to something new and Renee only has limited space in her luggage allowance.

3.  The women in general wear Nepali clothes and so it would be most useful for them to have something they could layer such as a t-shirt or cardigan.

4.  The deadline for clothing items to reach Renee is Friday 19th March.  Please e-mail us at renee@wwr-nepal.org for the address to send items to.

5.  Should you wish to hand Marilyn (in Reading) or Anna (in Watchfield, nr Swindon) the items for them to post on with other garments that have been collected, then the deadline is Monday 15th March.  Please e-mail anna@wwr-nepal.org for their addresses also. 

6.  If you sponsor a specific woman and would like the garment to go particularly to her then please write her name and yours on the label.  

Thank you so much for you support.  We really do appreciate it and know that it makes such a huge difference to the lives of the women in Nepal, all of whom burst into tears whenever we give them a gift!  Please do not hesitate to get in contact with us if you have any questions.  

With our heartfelt thanks,

 Anna, Renee and Marilyn

The Trustees of WWR

Christmas Gifts

This Christmas WWR gave all the women we support a shawl.  Here are some of the women wearing theirs.

Subhadra and her daughter

Yamuna on Christmas Day

 We have also recently bought our two newest ladies a cooking stove and cupboard each. 

Durga with her new stove