PROGRAM UPDATES
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April 29, 2020
Honoring Mothers Everywhere Mother's Day this year was like no other. With social distancing keeping many families apart, gatherings with loved ones were limited. While celebrating Mother's Day, we were awestruck by your kindness toward our HIO families in Nepal. Your generous gifts to our emergency relief program during the current pandemic make a profound difference in their lives. Your loving care and support is truly changing lives. One girl, one mother at a time. Our most heartfelt gratitude for your kindness on Mother's Day and always. Read more... |
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4/17/2020
Finding Our Way Forward - Silver Linings Amidst our worry and concern, we are once again filled with hope and light. Grounded by thoughts of our true purpose. The essence of Hands in Outreach is forever the wonderful promise of you encouraging a young girl's dreams. Instilling confidence that places her on a path out of deep-rooted poverty. Achieving a better life for herself and her family. It’s your kind support that makes all the difference. Read More... |
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3/31/2020
Updates from the Field and...Harvard Bound! In the midst of the coronavirus news dominating the airwaves, we received an excited silver lining note from Nirupama Magar, an HIO senior from the Budhanilkantha School, one of the top in Nepal. Nirupama shared that she’d just been accepted to Harvard on a full scholarship. Marvelous news for Nirupama and our HIO family. What HIO girls can achieve! Read more... |
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3/20/2020
COVID-19 Response - Caring for the HIO Family With the rapid spread of COVID-19, we’re reminded of the need to care for the many wonderful people who make up our HIO family. If there's a silver lining to this global health emergency, it may be that it forces us all to take a deep breath and focus on what's most important - community, compassion and the well-being of our girls. Read More... |
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3/8/2020
International Women's Day - Be Part of Her Dream In Nepal, girls and women have the least opportunity for education. Since the time they were able to walk, they've been raised as subservient caregivers. They're treated as marginalized citizens in a patriarchal society that views girls and women as less than their brothers and husbands. HIO's women's education program, Be Part of Her Dream (BPOHD), is helping to shift this narrative for women like Renuka Moote. Read More... |
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2/23/2020
Food Relief Efforts Few of us can imagine the immense daily challenges HIO families face. Seemingly simple necessities - food, clean water, and clothing - can be remarkably hard to come by. If one of our girls arrives hungry to school, her chances of learning are diminished. Your support helps us provide desperately poor families in Kathmandu a modest but meaningful measure of security for two months out of the year. Read more... |
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2/3/2020
Taking Precautionary Measures to Prevent Coronavirus Nepal shares it’s northern Himalayan border with China, and the two nations are key trading partners. With the outbreak of Coronavirus in China dominating world news, our thoughts immediately turn to the safety of our HIO girls, their families and teachers and our staff in Kathmandu. Teachers at our Strong Roots and Chandra Kala preschools are re-teaching children and their mothers about basic steps for keeping their hands free of germs. We have ample handwashing facilities at each school, and additional hand sanitizing supplies have been purchased. Read more... |
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12/31/19
Higher Education Fund Grows We're so excited. You grew our Higher Education Dreamers Fund by $30,000. Your kindness is just amazing! While an inspiring 2019 comes to a close, 2020 promises so many new beginnings. With your abundant generosity, your faith in the power of education, and your trust in HIO, we're delighted to begin celebrating our 35th year of serving poor girls and women in Nepal. Together, we can accomplish so much good. Read more... |
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12/16/19
Meet Nepal HIO's Board Meet Niyma, Sarah, Binita, and Mamata. All have served as valued board members for Sano-Sansar - Hands in Outreach Nepal - our sister NGO in Nepal. These gifted, hard-working young women epitomize the phrase - achieving the unimaginable. HIO’s caring network of hope created pathways toward their success. All of these young women have mothers who envisioned more for their daughters than teen marriage, low-wage menial jobs, and dead-end lives on the street. Read more... |
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11/17/19
Neru and Jamuna—Success Stories Jamuna Giri was married at age 18 and now has three children. A self-described housewife, she pridefully cooks and cleans, caring for her family's modest two room apartment. Two beds for six people. Jamuna's a star student in our women's education program. She attends early morning class nearly every day, and her confidence is growing. She's recently added lots of English verbs to her vocabulary and she's learning to make lovely beaded bracelets as part of our vocational training initiative. Read more... |
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11/3/19
Nepal Staff Delivering an educational intervention to poor families in a developing country is a daunting task. HIO's Nepal staff tirelessly rise to the unpredictable day-to-day challenges of their work. At the heart of HIO's success, Ram Adhikari, Palmo Tamang, and Kanchan Adhikari brilliantly manage our sponsorship, educational and social service programs. Their commitment and dedication enable our girls and their families to reach for big dreams and achieve the unimaginable. Read more... |
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10/23/19
Pooja and Kritika—Success Stories HIO sponsors the education of 165 girls from kindergarten through college. Families we serve are most often headed by poor, single mothers. All are working hard to provide a small measure of stability for their children. Most never had a chance to attend school themselves. A generational change is evolving through a lifelong, family-centric approach to education. Most HIO girls go on to college and many now attend graduate school studying medicine, dentistry, business, ecology, and law. Truly astounding. Read more... |
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8/22/19
Yangchen Lama—HIO Alumna Last June, Yangchen Lama delivered the keynote commencement address to the class of 2019 at Moses Brown School in Providence, RI. Offering advice to this promising group of MB graduating seniors would be considered a great privilege by anyone. For Yangchen, this moment was particularly meaningful. She grew up in a remote village at 17,000 feet in Nepal where girls and women receive few chances at education. Yangchen’s father so valued education that he moved his family to Kathmandu where Yangchen started kindergarten at age nine. At the top of her ninth-grade class, she came to the US four years later with a scholarship to Moses Brown in Providence. Yangchen graduated from MB in 1994 and is now a highly successful Senior Vice President of Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley and is a valued member of the HiO board. Read more... |
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5/22/19
Your Donations Help People See Access to reading glasses is a global health problem that Hands in Outreach is trying to help solve. This problem came to our attention through Restoring Vision, an organization that empowers people in developing countries by providing them with glasses. Access to glasses. Access to education. Our missions are so closely aligned. Palmo and Ram, HIO’s co-directors in Nepal, were quick to recognize the huge impact new reading glasses could have on the communities we serve. Read more... |
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422/19
No Ordinary Day at the Park Hands in Outreach supports two lovely inner-city Kathmandu preschools. They provide beacons of hope to some of the poorest children in the city. Our Strong Roots Preschool is located in the heart of the Balkhu Slum. Poor people from all over Nepal, mostly women and children, co-exist in this muddy area of cobbled together huts on the banks of the fetid Bagmati River. All hope for a better life. Gary Jost, a former HIO Board member, stopped by Strong Roots during a recent visit to Nepal. Like anyone who’s blessed to enter this tiny haven, Gary was heartened by a warm, loving sense of community. And discouraged by the lack of decent outdoor play space. Strong Roots children battle daily with wretched air quality. Sticks and rusted pipes become their makeshift playthings. During monsoon season, they tiptoe through ankle-deep muck on their way to school. Gary was determined to help these bright-eyed children get out of the slum...at least for a day. He envisioned them going to the zoo and he left enough rupees behind to help make this happen. Read more... |
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4/1/19
HIO Girls Celebrate Coming of Age In developing countries like Nepal, talking openly about sex and feminine hygiene is taboo. This can make adolescence a particularly confusing time for many girls. HIO teens are especially vulnerable. Too many have troubled home lives and are easily influenced by the street. Our loving support and guidance are vitally important as they navigate awkward teenage transitions. Hands in Outreach is committed to helping our girls understand, take care of, and be proud of their developing bodies. Read more... |
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2/6/19
Saving Money, Changing Lives Money is hard to come by for our families in Nepal. Most HIO-sponsored girls live in households led by single, illiterate mothers. Many of these women work at back-breaking, menial jobs hauling bricks and sand at construction sites or working as domestics. Often, our mothers earn no more than a few dollars for a 10-hour day of work. Shifting our girls’ understanding of how financial systems operate could help break the endless cycle of poverty they live in. Last August, Palmo came up with a brilliant idea—actively teach our girls that saving money can be empowering. Kanchan and Lata, who teach our women’s literacy classes at Chandra Kala, were quick to offer their help. Our team bought enough clay piggy-bank pots so that each of our girls at Bijeswori School could have one. Read more... |
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1/29/19
With So Many Thanks to Former HIO Board Members As per our by-laws, board members rotate off the board every year or two, allowing us to bring in new people and keep former board members engaged as advisors. With deep gratitude we lovingly acknowledge Carolyn Schmitz, Yangchen Lama, Lisa Sheble and Harry Dickens for their dedication and service to our girls and families in Nepal. Read more... |
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1/15/19
HIO Girls Love Receiving Your Letters! In early March, Laura Hunt and Ricky will travel to Nepal to make home and school visits. Mail delivery is near impossible in Kathmandu, so we encourage direct hand delivery whenever an HIO friend is traveling to Nepal. We have lots of room in our bags for your letters. It’s never too late to begin building a relationship with your sponsored girl and her mother. They simply adore receiving your letters. If you’ve never communicated directly, why not start now? Your letter needn’t be long. It’s really the thought that matters most. What a loving affirmation it is for a child to know that someone halfway around the world cares enough about her to write. Read more... |
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1/4/19
Serving our HIO Families in Nepal The educational programming made possible by your generous support is allowing 165 girls and 50 of their mothers to have access to education, along with medical care and a measure of food security. Your support is helping train dedicated teachers into superb educators who'll benefit not only our HIO girls, but hundreds of their classmates in our partner schools as well. Offering social services to poor families halfway around the world is a daunting task and is only possible through your kindness and the dedication of our wonderful HIO staff. They’re the boots on the ground that make our heartfelt intervention possible. Read more... |
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10/15/18
Holiday Food Giving During the week of October 8th, for the Nepali Dassain Holiday festival, HIO staff successfully carried out a major food distribution effort in five locations around the Kathmandu Valley. Over a three-day period, the HIO team provided food for 177 families. Our team leaders, Palmo Tamang, HIO Deputy Director, and Kanchan Adhikari, CFO, had wonderful assistance from several HIO college young women and our students in the 11th and 12th grades, along with all of the teachers at Bal Kendra and Strong Roots. What a marvelous achievement! Read more... |
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7/6/18
The Faces of HIO The generosity of HIO sponsors currently supports the education of about 160 girls from age 4 to 25, from kindergarten through college. Several girls are now in graduate school studying medicine, dentistry, business and law. Our HIO families are predominantly headed by poor, single mothers who work hard to provide a small measure of stability to their children. Our girls and their mothers are smart, strong and brave. They’re resilient and grateful. Here are just a few of the girls you so kindly support. Read more... |
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6/7/18
Celebrating the Mothers' Education Class
On Thursday, May 17, 50 women came to class for their final lesson, marking a two-year journey of empowerment. These amazingly dedicated women came to class for an hour and a half every day to help lift themselves from their desperate poverty. Today they’ll be singing, dancing and enjoying special foods cooked in their honor to celebrate their wonderful accomplishments. Read more...
Celebrating the Mothers' Education Class
On Thursday, May 17, 50 women came to class for their final lesson, marking a two-year journey of empowerment. These amazingly dedicated women came to class for an hour and a half every day to help lift themselves from their desperate poverty. Today they’ll be singing, dancing and enjoying special foods cooked in their honor to celebrate their wonderful accomplishments. Read more...
4/27/18
A New Library at Strong Roots: The Alan and Barbara Boroff Community Library
We’re very pleased to report that in March, a wonderful new community library was opened at our Strong Roots preschool in the heart of the Balku slum in Kathmandu, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Most families live in squatter huts made of corrugated metal with no plumbing or electricity. The project was made possible with funds from Friends of Nepal, who are former Peace Corps volunteers who served in Nepal, and from generous HIO donors. We’re especially grateful to the very significant gift made by Lisa and Arthur Berkowitz. To recognize their kindness, the library has been named in honor of Lisa’s parents, Alan and Barbara Boroff, who’ve generously donated to HIO for over 30 years. Alan passed away last year and is deeply missed. Read more...
A New Library at Strong Roots: The Alan and Barbara Boroff Community Library
We’re very pleased to report that in March, a wonderful new community library was opened at our Strong Roots preschool in the heart of the Balku slum in Kathmandu, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Most families live in squatter huts made of corrugated metal with no plumbing or electricity. The project was made possible with funds from Friends of Nepal, who are former Peace Corps volunteers who served in Nepal, and from generous HIO donors. We’re especially grateful to the very significant gift made by Lisa and Arthur Berkowitz. To recognize their kindness, the library has been named in honor of Lisa’s parents, Alan and Barbara Boroff, who’ve generously donated to HIO for over 30 years. Alan passed away last year and is deeply missed. Read more...
1/19/18
Supporting the Sustainability of HIO: The True Costs of Sponsorship
Our HIO Board recently drafted a 5-year strategic plan with sustainability as one of the major components for our long-term wellbeing. What follows is a brief explanation for how, with your support, we can collectively ensure the sustainability of HIO going forward. Read more...
Supporting the Sustainability of HIO: The True Costs of Sponsorship
Our HIO Board recently drafted a 5-year strategic plan with sustainability as one of the major components for our long-term wellbeing. What follows is a brief explanation for how, with your support, we can collectively ensure the sustainability of HIO going forward. Read more...
9/6/17
Brave Women
A Recent Message from HIO Deputy Director, Palmo Tamang
I have the greatest respect for the HIO mothers who come to the Be Part of Her Dream mothers’ education class. Their day starts very early and ends very late. They come to the Bal Kendra learning center in the early morning at 6am for tea, and then learn in their class from 6:30am until 8am. Except for a few hours of house chores, they spend their time working to earn enough rupees to feed their families. Read more...
Brave Women
A Recent Message from HIO Deputy Director, Palmo Tamang
I have the greatest respect for the HIO mothers who come to the Be Part of Her Dream mothers’ education class. Their day starts very early and ends very late. They come to the Bal Kendra learning center in the early morning at 6am for tea, and then learn in their class from 6:30am until 8am. Except for a few hours of house chores, they spend their time working to earn enough rupees to feed their families. Read more...
7/18/2017
Corresponding with Your Sponsored Girl
We're happy to report that this spring you made it possible for 18 new girls to go to school under the HIO umbrella, bringing our total to 150 sponsored girls. It’s wonderful that you've done so much toward providing a group of very poor girls with the gift of education. We’re ever grateful for your kind support.
Our girls and their families love getting your letters. It’s never too late to begin a relationship with your sponsored child. If you’ve never communicated directly, why not start now? English is the curriculum language in our partner schools. Read more...
Corresponding with Your Sponsored Girl
We're happy to report that this spring you made it possible for 18 new girls to go to school under the HIO umbrella, bringing our total to 150 sponsored girls. It’s wonderful that you've done so much toward providing a group of very poor girls with the gift of education. We’re ever grateful for your kind support.
Our girls and their families love getting your letters. It’s never too late to begin a relationship with your sponsored child. If you’ve never communicated directly, why not start now? English is the curriculum language in our partner schools. Read more...
5/26/17
Following Her Dream
Jarmit Magar is a lovely child with a very kind, pleasing face. She is quiet and always pleasant to speak with. At eleven years old, Jarmit is in the 5th grade at the LMV School. She’s a very hardworking, motivated child who knows her responsibilities both at home and in school. She never complains about her schoolwork and difficulties she might have at home. Jarmit can cook her own food when her parents are not around. She helps her mother with all the household chores and talks about wanting to be a doctor. In so many ways she’s a blessing to her mother Shardha. Read more...
Following Her Dream
Jarmit Magar is a lovely child with a very kind, pleasing face. She is quiet and always pleasant to speak with. At eleven years old, Jarmit is in the 5th grade at the LMV School. She’s a very hardworking, motivated child who knows her responsibilities both at home and in school. She never complains about her schoolwork and difficulties she might have at home. Jarmit can cook her own food when her parents are not around. She helps her mother with all the household chores and talks about wanting to be a doctor. In so many ways she’s a blessing to her mother Shardha. Read more...