Trustee, Will Russ climbs with friends to Everest Base Camp

It has been a strange talking positively about my recent trip to Nepal in light of the recent disaster, which I luckily missed by a matter of days, but I would still like to share it with you here. If you haven't heard it is with huge relief I can say that the home was unaffected by the earthquake. My trek to base camp and subsequent visit to the home was a spectacular 3 weeks in my favourite country and the Everest region is something that is hard for my unskilled writing abilities to describe due to the scale of the geography to be quite hard to comprehend even when you are there! While the trip as a whole went very well it wasn't without its hiccups. Illness, freak weather and a desire to finish a day early in order to get more time at the home meant we had a couple of grueling and long days during our decent. But we made it, not least because of our invaluable guide Nirkumar Rai who went above and beyond to keep us safe and our costs to a minimum. Please get in touch if you are thinking of trekking in the region and I will pass your details on.

It was also great to spend time at the home and check how things were going. I can happily report that the children are all very well and succeeding in their studies, with almost all of them passing their exams this year. I had many "oh how you've grown" moments as it had been 3 and a half years since I had last visited and it wasn't long before I felt part of the family again. I met with their new Tibetan teacher Sonam and Lama's wife Jyoti (Lama was away fundraising in Australia, but I did have a great conversation with him on the phone) to go through a needs and future plans assessment. This was hugely useful in getting a better idea of where the home is up to, where we may be able to help more and what we need to prepare for as the children get older. Issues facing the home at the moment are the need for the new home to be built and finding sponsors for the last few unsponsored children. As funding building activity is outside the official remit of FOHCCH we will be aiding it by stepping up support for day to day costs so that they can save other donations for the building. And if you are interested in sponsoring a child (£340 per year) please contact us.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief update and if you would like to know more, please get in touch via the contact on the website! 

Thanks for reading,

Will Russ