(translated at no charge by Jens-U.H. Schweitzer)
Why I founded Helping Hands World and became involved in charity and Purnabal Plus.
When I was in Kathmandu in 2013/2014 I happened to be shown a charitable organization caring for children who are infected/affected by HIV/AIDS and do not have the opportunity to attend school due to poverty. Punarbal Plus is dedicated also to the goal of minimizing the impact of HIV/AIDS through education and awareness.
I was deeply impressed and moved firstly by the fact that there was a charitable organization and somebody caring unselfishly for children in need and secondly that the idea of a children’s home for HIV/AIDS infected/affected orphaned children who have not the opportunity to attend a school and study was initiated and organized by a woman.
Those were the reasons why I felt the necessity to help these children who, otherwise, would not have had any chance in life at all. The plight of the children impressed me so deeply that I decided to give them a helping hand, too.
To achieve its aims Punarbal Plus has organized two projects:
- PunarbalShikshyaSadan, the first educational institution in Nepal that is imparting education to children who are infected/affected by HIV/AIDS and to children who do not have the opportunity to attend school due to poverty.
- Punarbal Home, a care and support center for HIV/AIDS infected and affected children. HIV/AIDS is epidemic in Nepal and Punarbal and is spreading massively affecting in particular children, which is disastrous in many ways. There is a growing number of children who are either infected themselves or have lost their parents due to AIDS, and often those children would end up living on the streets because very little has been done to help them.
That was the reason why I sensed the urgency oft he problem and I realized that I had to do something myself. So the idea of Helping Hands World came into being to help and assist Purnabal Plus in their charitable work.
Helping Hands World offers two possibilities of making a contribution to the improvement of the children’s situation: either by providing financial funds to support Purnabal Plus or by adopting a child through sponsoring.
