ADOPTION AND
ORIGIN SEARCH SUPPORT
THE CHALLENGE
In Nepal, children are abandoned for a variety of factors, including: poverty, social stigma, lack of access to education, and traditional gender biases, children born out of wedlock, and children born to single mothers. Families in financial distress might feel unable to care for a child, especially if they believe the child may bring shame or hardship.
Abandoned children often end up in underfunded orphanages with limited resources or on the streets, where they face neglect, exploitation, and lack of access to basic needs and education.
IMPACT
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Children Found
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Families Found
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Children Adopted
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Children Graduated (HCC)
OUR RESPONSE - RECONNECT FAMILIES
We partner with ISS to help reconnect separated families and protect vulnerable children before considering adoption. We seek to re-unite abandoned children with other family members who may be interested in adopting them. Our focus is on the child’s best interests, providing socio-legal counsel and psychological support. Services include tracing the origins of adopted Nepalese children, offering counseling to adoptees and their families, and ensuring adoption adheres to legal standards. We also support child protection and cross-border coordination, working with ISS to reunite families and ensure effective international collaboration on child rights.
OUR RESPONSE - ADOPTION
In partnership with Himalayan Children's Charities, we create paths out of poverty for orphaned and abandoned Nepali children. Through investment in quality education, innovative mentorship and a loving family environment, we help build lives of leadership. Our program focuses on higher education for at-risk youth, helping them develop life skills, career paths as well as emotional intelligence. By providing quality education, innovative mentorship and a loving family environment; this program empowers at-risk children to live lives of dignity, self-sufficiency and community leadership despite the economic status they were born into.
To date, over 200 at-risk children in Kathmandu and the surrounding rural districts have been supported with this program. For students in the program their school fees/supplies, medical, housing and living costs are covered allowing them to focus on their studies.
In March 2016, HCC graduated its first group of 10 students - eight students graduated with university degrees, and all 10 have secured employment or are pursuing master's degrees. Giving back to community is a cornerstone of the HCC educational philosophy, and these graduates are having profound effects in the community by volunteering their time to: provide healthcare advice and first aid training to rural communities; tutor and mentor orphans at the state-run orphanage in Kathmandu; deliver anti-trafficking comic books to village families for education and prevention; bring computer training basics to rural schools; educate girls in feminine hygiene and health practices; and work with relief programs and other NGOs.
