CHILDREN AT SHANTI

Pure joy beams from this young girl's face. Pumi Maya has a distorted spine, and remained petite due to malnutrition in early childhood. When she was a small girl, her grandmother carried her on her back in a bamboo basket to Shanti, because she didn't have enough money to raise the orphaned child. Now a teenager, Pumi Maya is sharp as a tack, and her good mood is contagious for the entire class.

Every morning, the children are oiled from head to toe – good for the senses, good for the skin, good for well-being!

Cuddled closely together, the young ones take their nap in kindergarten.

A HEART FOR MANY, MANY CHILDREN.

Besides the ill and those in need, children are a focus of the work at Shanti as well. They are the future, in Nepal as well as the rest of the world. One important goal is that they have proper clothing, get enough to eat, grow up in sanitary conditions and receive a good school education.

If you ask parents in Nepal what their biggest dreams are, the first one is unanimously that their children get a good education.

For this reason, Shanti founded an integrated school in Budhanilkhanta inspired by the Waldorf teaching method. It is open to all children born at Shanti, orphans who are brought to Shanti, or those who are cast out from normal society due to disability.

Smaller children are cared for in the kindergarten, which is also open all day. This allows adults to pursue work or are integrated into the employment programme at Shanti.

Orphaned schoolchildren have found a new home in the orphanage in Budhanilkhanta. Older orphaned youth are housed in the Kathmandu-Tilganga station.