Spot the New Year resolution

Oh yes, I am back after a short silence. I abandoned this blog in late 2009 as the pressure of work had become just too intense for me to continue to write this and still enjoy it. I don't believe the workload is going to be any less this year but it seems likely that it will become more focussed on Nepal and India and I'll feel that bit less stretched. It feels great to be writing this journal again - I have really missed it.

I have a number of goals for this year, some personal, some public. One of the latter is to run the London Marathon on the 17th April. This will be my first marathon event, my greatest previous competitive distance being 10km. At 51 I am aiming to be more of a tortoise rather than a hare but I am sure I will complete the course even if lasting the full 26.2 miles is a matter of pride mentally or through resort to hands and knees physically. Training is well underway and today I passed the psychological barrier of running for over two hours for the first time when I ran two hours two minutes around the Bhaisepati planning area on the outskirts of Kathmandu. This is a perfect training area as it is flat, has clean(ish) air and very little traffic to contend with. The only downside is to reflect upon how Mother Nature is losing out to the "planning" with fields surrendering almost by the day to new - and rather grotesque - buildings that seem to be sprouting up everywhere. In just a few years time this last little patch of green just outside the ring road will have gone for ever.

The running effort will be all worthwhile though as I am now half way (when gift aid is included) towards achieving my fundraising goal of raising £20k in sponsorship for the charity I founded in 1999, The Esther Benjamins Trust. You can add to my total with ease through my online sponsorship form. Thanks for that in anticipation.

I wonder how long my New Year resolution will last for?

Missing the point

One of our partner NGOs in Nepal, the Nepal Child Welfare Foundation (NCWF), is based in Bhairahawa which is just 20km from the birthplace of the Buddha at Lumbini. The Lumbini Garden, which measures 7.7 square kilometres, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been developed over the years by the Lumbini Development Trust. It includes the spot where the Buddha was born in 623 B.C. and incorporate within its large area a number of temples that reflect the differing temple architecture of Buddhist nations around the world.

As part of my charity fundraising this year, I had planned to complete my fourth 10km run at a new event we'd set up ourselves as "The Lumbini 10km". The concept was to have an early morning run one Saturday in November that would take sponsored runners through the park area (away from dangerous Nepali traffic) with the event all over and done with by 9 a.m. This would raise badly-needed funds for the NCWF's ongoing childcare and allow me to hit my personal £40k fundraising target. Initial approaches to the Lumbini Development Trust (LDT) were encouraging and included discussions of possible routes with one Board member, Mr Hari Rai. However two days ago our team at last managed to arrange a meeting with Mr Parma Syangbo Sherpa, the Board Secretary. Dressed in his monk's yellow robes he flatly refused permission to allow the event to go ahead, saying that it would disturb the serenity of the place.

I have now written to the LDT, questioning Mr Sherpa's authority to take such a unilateral decision, that has such far reaching consequences, without consulting the Board. Moreover I have pointed out that his stance seems to be at variance with the remit of LDT to develop the site (sensitively and sustainably) as a national and international tourist site. We'll see what the Board says.

But sometimes I feel some of those who are central figures within organised religions are so immersed in their religious practices that they miss the point and forget the (almost universal) central calling to help the most needy members of society.

Martin Cheek

One of the big names in the international mosaic scene, Martin Cheek, has agreed to come out and give us some consultancy between the 5th and 13th May. I got to hear about Martin first through my wife Bev who attended one of his weekend courses about fifteen years ago. I ended up going to his summer course in Greece five years ago and then the following year, with Bev, to another of his courses in Florence. As you can see from his website his work is not only very artistic but full of humour. But be warned that if you attend one of his classes you'll have to endure the other side of Martin's humour - his really grim, very old jokes. You'll find one or two pictures of me looking remarkably cheerful under the circumstances on his website's courses page.

Anyway, Martin will be providing training support to the trainers who are running the integrated art workshop in Bhairahawa and helping with design input. He'll also be helping us to prepare for a photographic/mosaic exhibition that we'll be running at several venues later on this year to mark the Trust's 10th birthday.

One of Martin's other students is leading British journalist Libby Purves who has shown some interest in following up his visit and our work. And I discovered last week that one of the charity's Trustees, Sue Duncan, has also been on a Cheek weekend course. Small world!

London Marathon

Yesterday was the London Marathon and this year The Esther Benjamins Trust fielded a record 15 runners. Most were made up of two teams from two of our leading corporate supporters Ramboll Ltd and Joules Clothing Ltd. One of the individual runners was James Caulfield, the youngest participant of the day, who was celebrating his 18th birthday in fine style. I am still awaiting news on the times but I gather from one runner that, as usual for the Marathon, it was a scorcher in London so the times are likely to be on the slow side.

My paltry contribution to running yesterday was an early morning 10km training run in Kathmandu which I completed in 50.5 minutes. That is seven and a half minutes faster than I ran in Hong Kong in February.

Kusum

In my post of 24th February, "Raw Poverty", I described my visit to a trafficking-prone community in Makwanpur District which had left me profoundly shaken. This followed my seeing a little four year old girl, Kusum, hiding under a quilt inside a grubby hut. Her mother had died three months previously and she was refusing to speak and hiding from all visitors. We had the dilemma of what to do with this acutely traumatised child. Many aid organisations would maintain that this child should be supported within her community and kept close to her remaining family. That's easier said than done in a Nepalese rural community. On top of that her father had little time to dedicate to his daughter; he had to labour during the day and Kusum was keeping company with a young couple who had their own children to look after.

We decided, with her father's blessing, to bring Kusum and her ten year old sister Anisha to our Kathmandu refuge and I saw her there on Friday, the day after she arrived. She's still not speaking but is in the loving care of the refuge staff, surrounded by curious and exuberant refuge children. This is the first traumatised child we've admitted to the refuge in a long time and her rehabilitation is going to be a challenge; my daughter Alisha is looking forward to doing her bit and plans to buy her a teddy before going to see her again on Monday. Within a month Kusum will be a totally different child. The cost of care for the two girls will be £1080 per year but that's a small price to pay.

Any sponsors out there?

Dhanyabad

Around thirty of the children that The Esther Benjamins Trust is caring for at its refuges in Kathmandu and Bhairahawa in the southwest are the dependents of prisoners. I prefer to call our facilities "refuges" rather than "homes" as, in the ideal, they provide full time care only on a temporary basis. In the case of prisoners' children this is pending their parents' release. It's important to keep tabs on the prisoners as, in spite of what they agree at the time we admit their children, it is common for them to vanish into the ether after they are freed in the expectation that we will continue to care for their offspring. For our part we are proactive in reuniting the children with parents as soon as they have found work and can provide a family home but we give the releasees a little leeway after release to sort themselves out. Moreover we are happy to help with some short term financial support (e.g. for educational costs) to smooth the reunification path. This approach is in the best interests of the children and ensures that our refuge facilities can be extended to other, more needy, children.

Two brothers, Raju and Rajesh, came to us back in 2001 after their father was jailed in Tulsipur prison in the far west of Nepal. They have been staying at our Bhairahawa refuge ever since. Towards the end of last year the father was released and it was easy to see how keen the boys were to go home and resume family life. However, this had to be delayed as he needed to find work. Two days ago one of our field staff went with the older brother, Raju, to trace the father. On arrival in his village it transpired that he had remarried and was building a house. He was not at all keen to take the boys back - prisoners enjoy the prospect of a totally fresh start - and would have been more than happy for us to continue to look after the boys to a standard that's better than he could ever afford. But he will take them back; as I see it if he's sufficiently well off to build a house then his finances are good enough to fend for the children.

One of the disappointing things that I see about the parents that we have to deal with is a lack of responsibility (often fuelled by alcohol abuse) and an unwillingness to take ownership of their children. We have to be careful not to indulge these unhealthy sentiments. But the other thing that gets me is the lack of appreciation. Purely in monetary terms, the cost of daily care for Raju and Rajesh over the years has probably been in the region of £8.5k but dear old dad will never say thanks. Instead he clearly expects more off us. This thanklessness is not unique to him by any means. The word "dhanyabad" ("thank you") is a fairly recent addition to the Nepali language. This grates a bit but then you have to remind yourself that what we do we do for the children, not for the parents.

Shailaja has just phoned me to say that gymnast Aman Tamang, who was one of our two refuge children taking part in the National Games last week, has been named as one of the top nine athletes from the games. This means he has won a purse of 25,000 rupees (£210) which equates to six months' salary at the national minimum wage.

Good Friday in Nepal

Yesterday I attended a children's picnic for the 100 kids who are at our Kathmandu refuge. A picnic consists of a trip to a park in the surrounding hills, music, dancing, games and of course (copious) amounts of food. Meanwhile eleven older children from our Bhairahawa refuge in the south were rounding off a five day trek in the Annapurnas, north of Pokhara (for those who know the area this included Ghorepani, Chisopani, Pun Hill, Tadopani, Ghandruk). This is a super challenge for the kids and all part of our overall aim of not just providing for children's basic needs but, quite literally, going an extra mile or two.

These kinds of activities are funded through our "recreation sponsorship" where we invite sponsors to contribute £5 per month for a named child; I can't think of a better way of spending 17 pence a day. We also invite supporters who have a little more cash at their disposal to consider an educational sponsorship of £15 per month or a general sponsorship of £25 per month. To commit to one or more of our children in this way please visit our website.

The Esther Benjamins Trust newsletter

One of my charity tasks is to assemble a six monthly newsletter. Following my efforts, complimented by design and editorial support from our London office, the Spring edition has just been published and you can see the online version here:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/images/newsletter/Newsletter_spring_A4.pdf

The slums of Butwal

Last month our volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane recorded a visit by some of our Bhairahawa refuge children to their home area in the slums of Butwal, which is half an hour's drive away. It proved to be a very bleak visit and I have now uploaded Jonny's pictures to Flickr.

We are now researching how we might provide support to the children who are in the midst of this urban poverty which is every bit as grim at the rural poverty of Makwanpur District. We're aiming to launch a new project in Butwal in the middle of this year.

Colour at The White House

The Esther Benjamins Trust's first children's refuge, the so called "White House", was set up in Bhairahawa southwest Nepal in 2000. It is currently providing a temporary home for 30 schoolgoing children. Most are children of prisoners but there are also some former street children and conflict affected children in their number. Over the last couple of months the refuge has received the support of eight gap year students. Volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane visited the refuge last month and I have just uploaded his striking images to Flickr.

Childcare at the refuge costs in total £45 per month and we need sponsors to help us meet this cost. Sponsorship can be at three levels; £25 per month to cover general care costs, £15 per month for educational costs or £5 per month as a recreational sponsorship. Let me know if you can help.

Jim Edwards

Long term resident of Nepal, Jim Edwards, passed away on Monday. Originally from Jersey in the U.K. Jim came to Nepal in the early 1960's as a big game hunter but metamorphosed soon afterwards into a leading conservationist. He set up a company, Tiger Mountain, that inter alia managed exclusive holidays in Chitwan National Park ("Tiger Tops") and at Bardiya National Park where guests could indulge in tiger spotting from the safety of the back of an elephant. He'd a great sense of fun and introduced Nepal - and the World - to the sport of elephant polo which is now also played in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Jim was very supportive to the work of The Esther Benjamins Trust through Tiger Mountain and has channelled support and sponorship to us, while allowing our refuge children to enjoy an occasional free holiday at his centres. This very distinguished and charming man will be missed by the British community in Nepal within which he was such an enormous presence. And as I read in the papers of how the endangered Asian one horn rhino population has been almost eradicated from Bardiya National Park through poaching, I can only reflect upon the scale of the loss of Jim to the conservation scene. His full obituary can be read here.

Outside my window I have just heard the first cuckoo of Spring announce its arrival.

Iron gate

The School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations have just started in Nepal, which equates to the GCSE examinations in the UK. It should in theory be taken by students when they're around 16 but older candidates present themselves who are re-sitting the exam or who have missed out on education for whatever reason. This year quite a few "People's Liberation Army" (PLA) personnel who are veterans of the recently-ended conflict are taking the exam. SLC is a critical qualification and is known as the "iron gate" for without it there can be no progression to higher education, to decent vocational training or much of a chance of finding a good job. In this very poor country there's always a great deal of hype around SLC and each year there is usually the tragedy of a few suicides that follow exam failures.

We had a very different experience of an iron gate last week. My mosaic art workshop "Himalayan Mosaics" moved out of its old premises in Godawari, just outside Kathmandu. It transferred just a mile or so up the road and is now sited in purpose-built rooms on the roof of my partner Director Shailaja's new home. The problem was that two of our dogs had to move with the workers and Shailaja's compound had to be suitably secure to prevent these former street dogs from exploring their roots. That meant a gate had to be fitted and we took a chance and allowed local staff to install this for us. The outcome was the placing of an expensive monstrosity of a metal gate that looks quite incongruous and ostentatious in the midst of a rather poor hillside village. Fitting the gate took a long time as the chap who was supervising the work didn't think to measure the available space so they ended up having to cut away a lot of adjacent bank to make room for this expanse of metalwork. Shailaja, who is currently in India, is blissfully unaware of these goings on and will have a fit when she gets back.

I have seen this behaviour pattern many times over my years of being in Nepal - something I call "catastrophic decision making". Local workers can come up with the most bizarre solutions to problems the thought processes behind which just defy comprehension. Recounting the gate saga to a friend of mine the other evening she put it another way, referring to the "I" and "J" words. These stand for initiative and judgement and to her mind the two do not go hand in hand in Nepal. It takes quite an effort for a show of initiative to be displayed by a local worker, but one's delight at this is shortlived as it is rarely balanced with good judgement.

In my own display of folly this week I have registered for The Third World Run in Belfast on the 31st May, taking me back home to Northern Ireland for the first time in 13 years. This will be my fourth 10km run for my charity, The Esther Benjamins Trust, in its 10th birthday year. I have increased my sponsorship target to £40,000 and with £26,660 raised so far I am sure I can get there. If you'd like to support me either join me on one of my runs. Or, if you are blessed with better judgement than to do that, please visit my online sponsorship page.

Hatemalo e.V.

Five years ago two German clinical psychologists, Katharina Tomoff and Micha Luedecke, volunteered for us at our Hetauda centre. They came as unknown quantities, but made a huge impact during their time with us, returning to Germany fired up to help us further. This is easier said than done as people return to their busy lives back home but last evening I heard from Katharina that she has now managed to register a supporting NGO in Germany. Her charity is called Hatemalo e.V.; Hatemalo is Nepali for "garland of hands" and e.V. indicates that this is a German registered charity.

Katharina will now have her work cut out in setting up website, literature and presenting plans to potential supporters. But this process has received an unexpected boost from Spain from where a translation agency, Uyngo.com, wrote to us out of the blue a few days' ago offering to translate documents and videos into a language of our choice as a free service out of respect for our work. Katharina's English is perfect but I have taken them up on their offer of subtitling one YouTube video which would otherwise have presented a technical problem. I will post the video on this site once it has been translated,

I love it when things come together like this and how marvellous are our worldwide volunteers!

Raw poverty

My two day visit to Hetauda left me profoundly moved and with an image that I will never forget.

The aim of the journey was to accompany one of the charity's Trustees, Chris Haworth, on a factfinding trip to the rural areas around Hetauda which have been the main source of trafficked children to the Indian circuses (and elsewhere). On top of that I would be able to catch up on the circumstances of some of our beneficiaries' families through being guided by Shailaja, my partner Director in Nepal. And photographer Jonny Cochrane was with us, tasked with documenting the poverty.

Yesterday I went to visit the homes of several girls, including that of the girl who has just given evidence against the circus owner who (allegedly) raped her before we intervened to secure her release from The New Raj Kamal Circus in January 2007. She is one of eight children and we met the latest arrival to this very dysfunctional family - a babe in arms. The family home, pictured right with two of this girl's younger siblings, wasn't even made from wood; a lot of it seemed to consist of bark held together with mud. This and other village abodes, although sad to see, didn't shake me as much as one might imagine. I have seen this kind of hut many times before in Nepal and in other parts of the world.

This morning though I was taken unawares. We went to a very different kind of community where families were living in regimented brick-built cottages that had been constructed for them by a major international aid agency. We wanted to meet Basante and Hari, a couple whom we had freed from a circus in April 2004 (two of 29 releasees) who had subsequently got married and are now parents to two little girls. On the way to their cottage I was impressed with the layout of the buildings and their adjoining gardens and when we got there, the cottage looked fine as well. Then we went inside. It was then that I realised that we were still in the midst of raw poverty; it was only the walls and roof that surrounded it which were different from yesterday's experience. Somehow the juxtaposition of solid walls with the emptiness and grime within seemed to accentuate the hardship that the two families who were sharing the premises were having to endure. Indeed, the solidity of the walls even made it feel like a prison. A baby girl lay on the bed, with flies crawling around her eyelids. She was unresponsive to my attempts to connect with her.

Then came the haunting, surreal image. Shailaja beckoned to me to look inside one of the back rooms. There she indicated a lump on the bed. The lump was Basante and Hari's older child, a four year old girl, sitting upright, who had hidden herself under a quilt, something that she does for all visitors. It reminded me of the game that I play with my two and a half year old daughter - "Where's Alisha", as she hides in really obvious locations. But this wasn't a joke. The child was clearly traumatised by her environment, and harboured a terror that had been exacerbated by the death of one of the young women in the house a month ago. Another woman who was sharing the cottage told us how her brother had taken his own life by hanging a few months previously, an occurrence that was quite common within this desperate community. Eventually we coaxed the girl out from under the quilt and she posed with her parents for the picture on the right (the girl with the red collar). She was but one of a handful of similarly aged children who were just loitering at home, totally unstimulated.

Afterwards we visited a local school and discussed with the Headteacher how we might provide some community upliftment through broadening the educational provision available for the local children. This currently goes to only Class 5 (9-11 year olds). We discussed the possibility of introducing a creche for the kind of children that we had just seen and how education could be extended into Class 6 and beyond. He was very receptive and I believe something useful and positive has emerged from that meeting.

Nonetheless I came away from the village deeply saddened and wishing that those toddlers could be just scooped up out of there and given an infinitely better chance in life in the developed world. I am sorry, that's not very politically correct and quite naiive but that's how I felt.

Sophie's choice

The Trust attracts all kinds of volunteers for its work in Nepal - varying in age, experience and nationality. Last year was a bumper year in both quality and quantity with more volunteers than ever helping us out. 2009 has got off to a similar start with no fewer than 12 volunteers in country. These workers usually come to us well in advance but sometimes they just stumble upon us, an example being Tasmanian Sophie Shugg who volunteered at our art workshop in Kathmandu last year. Sophie has just described her experience in "The Advocate" magazine:

http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/news-features/mapping-out-a-future/1437006.aspx

We very much look forward to Sophie's return later on this year when we can hopefully make even better use of her services as the programme evolves.

Jonny Cochrane

Photographer Jonny Cochrane (http://www.jonnycochrane.com/) joined the team yesterday, after volunteering his photographic services for the coming 2-3 weeks. I took him up to the Godawari refuge this morning where we challenged his photographic skills through inviting him to snap our two resident gymnasts, Aman and Bijay. Both these boys learned some of their gymnastics inside the circus. After we rescued them they continued to develop their techniques through training at the National Stadium in Kathmandu. They attend the Stadium every morning before school. Pictured right is Aman in flight.

Hopefully Jonny's images can be incorporated not only into our literature but also into exhibitions that we'll run later on this year. Tomorrow he heads to Bhairahawa, then Hetauda and then will undertake an assignment for us in India.

Further to my post of 11th November - "Not so vital statistics" - I reckoned it was time today for another weigh-in. I am now down to 76.7 kg and a 96 cm waist which gives me a BMI of 25.33 (only just in the "overweight" category) and a waist/hip ratio of 0.96 which is still above the desired ratio of .90. But I am getting there...

Things you didn't know about Hong Kong

Well, first off, it was where The Esther Benjamins Trust effectively took off back in 2000. That's all thanks to my friends Ronnie and Carol Ford who at that time were teachers at Sha Tin international school. Ronnie, who has since become an accomplished professional artist (http://www.ronnieford.com/), staged an art exhibition as a fundraiser for the Trust. That was reported on by The Hong Kong Standard newspaper with its report of the charity's origins and early work in Nepal being hijacked by the South China Morning Post. A press visit to Nepal led to a feature making cover story in The South China Morning Post Sunday magazine; the very powerful story that was written by journalist Fionnuala McHugh then moved sideways to the UK's Daily Telegraph and we had the initial publicity we needed to ensure that the Trust didn't go the way of so many other new charities and wither on the vine. So Hong Kong is a very special place for me and it feels good to be back.

Other interesting, but fairly useless, facts from Hong Kong:

• Tomorrow's Marathon and associated running events will attract 54,272 runners.
• Of these 32,907 will be joining me in the 10km event.
• The record time for that event is 30 minutes 19 seconds, a target that has gone unbeaten since it was set in 2002.

I am not impressed with this time; I am sure that I can double that. That is if I can get out of bed early enough to be there for the 5.15 a.m. start.

There's still time to sponsor me and win a beautiful work of art from Nepal:

www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

Feet of clay

I have just returned from Saturday lunch with the children at the refuge. It's a lovely sunny day in Kathmandu and I was pleased to see upon arrival at the refuge that Shailaja, typically, was not lazing in the sun. Instead she had put the sun to work for her with two solar ovens up and running, baking bread for the children's lunch. And very good it was too. We are working towards using the larger, trailer mounted, solar oven commercially as it bakes more bread than even our voracious children can eat. That could provide a handy income to the local organisation, albeit a modest one.

Next week will see the start of an external evaluation of our work and yesterday I was revisiting a previous evaluation from 2005 which needs to be taken into consideration by a different evaluator, Jason Hoke, who will be conducting a more in-depth review. The evaluator at that time was very naive, surprisingly so since he'd lived for 20 years in Nepal and spoke the language, taking pretty well everything that the (then) local staff said to him at face value. Much of his report still grates with me. But one particularly unfair comment that was made was that by teaching children independent living and how to fend for themselves we were erroneously bringing them up in a Western way. In Nepali culture there is a great deal of interdependence within the family and the community. These links are reinforced through religious practice and festivals like the ones we've just had, Dashain and Tihar, when parent/child and sibling/sibling relationships are re-affirmed. Undoubtedly these practices can add a great deal of strength to family life, an inherent strength that we could indeed learn from in the West.

However that which can lead to intrinsic strength can also foster the weakness of dependence. And what happens when these social and family bonds fail and children end up sent to prison because there is no one prepared to bear the stigma of caring for the children of prisoners (even if they are relatives) or when children get sold and are trafficked into modern day slavery in the Indian circuses? Usually this represents an irretrievable breakdown of those bonds as families dissolve around the trafficking victims. The only answer surely is to "empower" (a grossly overused word within the development sector) the survivors and prepare children and young people to face the adult life in a tough country without being solely reliant upon support that may well be founded upon feet of clay.

Bailo

During the festival of Tihar Nepalese children perform "Bailo" going around people's houses singing and dancing in return for a donation and some treats - a bit like "trick or treat" in the Western world. Yesterday the refuge children came to my home and I recorded a short video of their trip. I have just now posted that footage to my charity run fundraising page in the hope that any viewers will contribute something to my online sponsorship in appreciation, just as I was pleased to put my hand into my pocket yesterday:

http://www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

A donation can be modest and I don't expect many to compete with the gentleman who added £5k to the kitty yesterday!

Dashain fall out

Earlier this month I described in a post how most of our refuge children go back to their villages to stay with family members for the main Hindu festival of Dashain. On the face of it our sending them back makes good sense as it's fulfilling the wishes of children to enjoy some semblance of family life and it keeps them in contact with families. Family bonds are very important in Nepal. However, this practice carries huge risks and once again we've had our annual raft of disasters. I met with the children's carer, Shailaja, yesterday to discuss the fall out from Dashain and the non return of a few children and teenagers.

It seems from our discussion that a large part of the problem comes from children leaving the structured routine of our refuge in Kathmandu to the unstructured (indeed chaotic) lifestyle back in their villages. Unsupervised by parents, the children are free to roam around the place, make acquaintances (some of which can be very unhealthy) and develop alternative naive visions for their short term futures. And so they come to the decision to drop out of education or training and in the case of at least four of those who are not coming back to us, to get married. Needless to say, the education and training that we offer provide a real future, but the children/teenagers don't necessarily see it that way and their families are too ignorant to counsel them otherwise.

Shailaja was clearly saddened during our discussion as she is very emotionally involved with the children. She has known some of them for years and it was she more than anyone who turned a few of them around after they emerged as basket cases from the abuse of the Indian circus. She's also upset in the knowledge that the children haven't realised their full potentials and won't get another chance or as good a chance again. And she knows that, after making a personal visit to the see the children at their homes this week that they won't be persuaded to come back to us. We have to therefore console ourselves in the knowledge that we have provided a stable emotional bridge between the circus and return to the community. Without that bridge the returnees' reintegration would have been difficult, if not impossible.

The vacant places at the refuge will be filled again soon; there are plenty of other young children - vulnerable siblings of returnees - who could use those vacancies and be offered a chance in life. However we decided yesterday that in future we will obtain a commitment from children and their parents that in the final four years before taking the all important School Leaver's Certificate examination (at age 16) refuge children will not return to their villages for Dashain or any other festival. Parents can come to see the children if they so wish. We have to ensure that expensive charity refuge/education places are used to their full potential and that children don't find themselves in the village environment which is so conducive to taking wrong decisions at a critical time for their future.

It's very hard to strike the right balance in this kind of work but if you keep at the forefront of your mind what is in the best interests of the individual child then you won't go far wrong.