What a child needs is not complicated. Providing it, year after year, is.
Pooja and the children at Boudhanath, Kathmandu
Most children who fall out of school don't lack ability. They lack ordinary things: fees paid on time, a uniform that fits, an adult who notices when something slips. We provide those things. Then we keep providing them.
Bhagya Nepal works with children facing hardship in Nepal, through education, mentorship and long-term guidance. Pooja Pyakurel has done this work for about eight years. Two years ago it became Bhagya Nepal, a registered organisation, so the commitment to every child no longer rests on one person.
Read Pooja's storyThree commitments, itemised.
Each line is a need, the reason it usually goes unmet, what we do about it, and for how long. Nothing here is a one-off, and the first of the three is paid for by Ruta6.
Education
School fees, uniforms, books and everything else a child needs in the classroom, all funded by our partner Ruta6. Then the unglamorous consistency that keeps a child there, year after year.
- A school place that stays paidFees fall due when a family can least cover them. One missed term quietly becomes a dropout.
- What we doSchool fees paid directly to the school, every term, before the deadline. Ruta6 funds the fees of every child we support.
- For how longEvery year, through Grade 12
- Uniform, books, stationeryA child without the right uniform is sent home. Not dramatically, just repeatedly.
- What we doSupplied at the start of each academic session, along with the materials the school asks for, all paid for by Ruta6.
- For how longEvery year
- Someone who reads the report cardWithout an adult watching, a slipping subject is noticed only once it's too late to fix.
- What we doResults reviewed after each terminal exam; extra tuition arranged where a subject slips.
- For how longThroughout schooling
Mentorship
An adult who shows up. Who knows your name, your report card, and your excuses. Guidance a child can count on rather than hope for.
- An adult who knows themChildren facing hardship meet many adults. Very few stay long enough to matter.
- What we doRegular one-to-one time with Pooja, and a second named adult who also knows the child.
- For how longOngoing
- Someone to call when it goes wrongCrises don't keep office hours, and most programmes do.
- What we doA direct line to their mentor, answered.
- For how longOngoing
- Help with the big decisionsWhich stream after SEE. Which college. Which offer. Decisions no one teaches you to make.
- What we doEach decision talked through with the child and their guardian. The child decides.
- For how longAt every transition
Sustained guidance
The years after the milestone. First jobs, first setbacks, a first home of one's own: the years in which guidance matters most and is rarest.
- A path after schoolSupport usually ends at the certificate, exactly when the questions get harder.
- What we doGuidance into higher secondary, college or vocational training; help with applications.
- For how longInto adulthood
- A safe place to liveSome young people finish school with nowhere safe to go back to, and no family to help them set up on their own.
- What we doWith our partner Higher Ground, we provide safe houses for young people who have finished high school and need to live independently.
- For how longUntil they're settled
- A fallbackFirst jobs end. First rent is hard. Most people have a family to fall back on.
- What we doContinued contact, advice, and practical help when it's needed.
- For how longNo end date
And we stay. Not for a programme cycle. Long enough to see what a child becomes, and to keep showing up after that.
Pooja is the face a child sees. Bhagya Nepal is the promise behind it.
Pooja's own life taught her that guidance which depends on chance isn't guidance at all. After six years of doing this work herself, she registered Bhagya Nepal, so that the commitment to each child is held by an organisation, not by any one person, including her.
Every child has a record
School history, contacts and progress are documented, so no child's story lives only in one person's memory.
Every child is known by two
Alongside Pooja, a second adult knows each child by name and circumstance.
A board that holds us to it
A board and advisory board oversee the commitments we've made, and review them regularly.
A plan for the unplanned
A written continuity plan sets out how every child stays supported if any one of us, Pooja included, cannot be there.
No child is held up by one pair of hands.
Every child's schooling is funded by Ruta6. Other partners carry other parts of the weight, and make the promise sturdier than we could alone.
Ruta6
Our founding partner in Spain pays for the schooling of every child we support: fees, uniforms, books, stationery and the materials each one needs, from their first day of school to graduation. It began in 2008, when students in Cantabria paid for one boy from Bal Mandir to go to school. Today schools, members and volunteers across Cantabria keep 50+ children in class through Bhagya Nepal.
Higher Ground
A social enterprise Pooja helped build in its early years, and whose board she still sits on. Together we provide safe houses for young people who have left school and need to live on their own.
Bal Mandir
The children's home where Pooja grew up. She has supported it for about twenty years, including a year-long food programme in 2020, and stays close to its management.
What we don't do
We don't rescue. We don't speak for children. We don't measure our work in tears moved or photos taken. We provide conditions (education, guidance, time) and the child does the rest.
- children walked alongside
- 50+
- of this work, and counting
- 8 years
Eight years, and counting. That is not a programme. That is a presence.
Meet the people who guide our workBecause a fate, once written, can be rewritten.
Your support can help a child access education, opportunity and a future beyond the circumstances they were born into.
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