In March 2013, Umbrella worked with Stichting Veldwerk (SV), a Dutch INGO, to close their children’s homes in the Sindhupalchok district of Nepal (5 hours from Kathmandu) and reintegrate the 13 children living there with their relatives in the surrounding villages.
When the children were originally taken in around 2006, Nepal’s internal conflict had just come to an end and many of them had lost their parent(s). Their turbulent home situations did not allow them to grow up in a safe environment. However, over 6 years later most of their family situations have improved, partly due to their mothers (often widows) having taken part in income generation activities, run by SV in the area.
The children were receiving a high level of care in the home, but recognising the Nepal government’s new stance on children’s homes, SV contacted Umbrella’s Country Director (Macartan Gaughan) with the possible reintegration of the children in mind. Umbrella’s experienced team was enlisted to help find a solution.
Over the course of the next two months, Umbrella’s Reintegration Officer (Tsewang Norbu Lama) met with representatives of Stichting Veldwerk and our Assistant Child Protection Officer (Guna Raj Thing) travelled to the area to perform comprehensive assessments and track down the surviving members of each of the children’s families. A case-by-case approach was taken and the best possible decision, with their welfare in mind, was made. Utilising the information garnered by Umbrella, SV successfully reunited these children with their families in the area and follow up visits have been very positive.
Umbrella are only just now making this announcement because we wanted to give the children time to settle back into their home communities and ensure that their reunification had become a successful reintegration.
For more information on Umbrella’s approach; reconnection to reunification and then reintegration please visit our Reintegration page.
Umbrella is a family-first organisation that believes that the best place for the psychosocial development of a child is with their family or community of origin, in line with the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, of the over 11,000 children said to be living in ‘orphanages’ in Nepal’s 759 homes, an estimated two thirds of them are not orphans (CCWB, 2012, Some Facts of Child Care Homes in Nepal).
Unfortunately Umbrella has not had the financial resources to perform large scale rescues over the last few years but we are reintegrating as many of our children as responsibly possible and we are committed to helping other organisations rescue and reintegrate where we can.
If you would like to further support our work please consider DONATING or seeing how you can get involved in the ‘How To Help’ section of our website.
