This Post Has No Title

Kristen’s Story

In 2019, I visited Nepal with a small group as part of a tour to Bhutan. Beginning in Kathmandu, we stayed for a few nights at the Hira Guesthouse owned by Dina and her family. Over a cup of masala tea I listened as Dina shared about a community project that she had started. In Nepal many rice growers living outside Kathmandu grow and harvest rice for six months of the year. In the non-rice growing months, families, looking for work, flood into Kathmandu. During this time, any spare land in Kathmandu is converted into brick factories. These factories pop up and offer work for whole factories.

Dina noticed that in these brick factories young children were working but not attending any schooling. Dina spoke to some of the owners and asked if she could run some literacy and numeracy classes for the children. She found a range of responses, some owners were more than happy for Dina to come and teach the children, even supplying space for a class room and writing materials, others weren’t so welcoming. Beginning with classes with children aged 3 to 16 she offered classes. She soon realised that there was a huge demand and she was just one person. She found other volunteers and ran some train the trainer classes and was soon operating classes in many brick factories across Kathmandu.

While Dina was telling me this story I could see that she was someone special. Someone who saw a need in her community and just got on with the task of filling that need. I asked Dina; ‘what else would you do in Kathmandu, if you weren’t limited by time or money?’

Dina looked at me and said; ‘do you really want to know?’

I replied; ‘Yes, I really want to know’.

‘Wait here.’

Dina returned a few minutes later with a pen and a piece of paper. She began to draw out a plan. In the centre of the paper, she drew a box and wrote ‘children’s library’, many other things got drawn, first-aid training, support for parents, emergency training and counselling centre. I looked at her map and said; ‘tell me about the libraries’.

‘There is only free one children’s library in Kathmandu. I think there should be more. I want to create a place where children can come, read books, play games, feel safe to play and explore’.

I said; ‘you want to give the children of Kathmandu a childhood’.

‘Yes! That’s exactly what I want to do’.

‘I think I can help you with the counselling centre.’

I told Dina how I had been working as a counsellor for almost 30 years, beginning as a volunteer in a community counselling project that my church began. After many years of counselling, I also trained as a spiritual director, which is a little bit like a counsellor but with a focus on exploring people’s spirituality and faith journey.’

We began to dream about what this project might look and feel like. I was returning to Kathmandu with another tour group in November so we agreed to meet again.

In November, I arrived a day earlier than the rest of the group and spent a very fun day zooming around the streets of Kathmandu on the back of Dina’s motorbike. We visited the lone children’s library, school and book supply stores, games shops, and even visited possible locations for our library. I offered an introduction to counselling course that evening and over a meal of chicken curry, generously supplied by Dina’s parents. At the end of the day, we both felt excited about the possibilities that would arise.

My plan was to return in March 2020 to offer a full weekend training course but as you know, Covid hit and put paid to our plans. By July no-one was quite sure how long the pandemic would go for so we decided to go ahead anyway training via Zoom. Counselling is a challenging topic to train at the best of times, let alone over Zoom, with an internet connection that isn’t always 100% reliable, in a language that for most of the participants isn’t their first. The first training course was over 6 weeks, a 90 minute session each week and an evaluation at the end. We had 28 people on that first course and the enthusiasm was obvious. Counselling isn’t particularly well known in Nepal so this was very new to everyone on the call.

Over the past three years we have run five training programs and trained over 100 people in basic counselling skills. It has been a joy to see the participants embrace the training and learn about themselves and loved ones. We are launching the counselling centre on March 24th in Kathmandu.