In Nepal many adults are held in prison for years pending trial, sometimes only to be eventually found innocent and released. This, together with the long sentences served by convicted criminals, can of course have a devastating impact upon family life. For example, it is quite common for the wife of a jailed man to re-marry as soon as she can since there is no social security safety net in Nepal and the husband's imprisonment effectively deprives her of her breadwinner. If this happens the children from the first marriage are often unwanted by the new husband. The children can be doubly unwanted as the prisoner's relatives may not wish to look after them either. For by taking them in they could be indirectly disclosing to friends and neighbours that they have a family member in jail and they are unwilling to bear this social stigma. So the children of prisoners can all too quickly end up either on the streets or in orphanages.

When this issue came to our attention in late 1999 there were scores of children inside Nepal's jails. They were being held in unhygienic and dangerous conditions, denied proper food, accommodation, healthcare, education and of course their freedom. We responded to this intolerable state of affairs with a two strand approach that on one hand removed children from prison into our limited refuge facilities in Bhairahawa (with the eager consent of the parents) and on the other hand raised awareness about the problem through the national and international media. The latter included leading articles in the UK's Daily Telegraph and Mirror newspapers, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and The Boston Globe in the USA. In total we rescued over 40 children from eight jails right across the country before the Government of Nepal finally took action and outlawed the jailing of innocent children in November 2001. Now children of prisoners who cannot be admitted to NGO private facilities are accepted into a central Government-supported home in Kathmandu.

The legacy of this early work is the continued care of most of the children that we removed from prison. This is because their parents are either still in jail (one group of four siblings now in our care has both parents serving a 21 year sentence for murder) or they may have been released but are barely able to look after themselves let alone their children. The parents' problems are compounded, as stated above, by the penal process creating one parent families. Moreover there is no prisoner rehabilitation in Nepal's jails and released prisoners continue to be stigmatised, being commonly unwelcome in their home villages.

We are committed to care for these children until they come of age or until their parents are able to look after them again. We do so to a very high standard with children being brought up in family-style refuges where they are indistinguishable from other children in the community. They attend the local school and are excelling at their studies, managing in the process to catch up on the lost years inside prison. The all-important contact with parents and family members is maintained through letter, telephone or prison visits.

In 2002 we rescued a group of ten children off the dangerous streets of Butwal, near to Bhairahawa, and brought them also into the Bhairahawa refuges. These have been joined by other abandoned or unwanted children and most recently by former circus children who have no homes to go to or whose families cannot be immediately identified. The children have blended into becoming one big family that enjoys a standard of daily care that is unrivalled in Nepal. And we work really hard to give these children an opportunity to express themselves; an example of this is The Bhairahawa Mosaic Project

The costs of this long term care are very high and as the project continues to expand we have an ongoing need for new child sponsors to join our child sponsorship scheme. We still need to raise £24,726 towards our 2006 Refuge Children Project budget of £51,847. This helps us meet the daily costs of the children's carers, food, clothes, education, medical expenses and treats. To donate specifically towards The Refuge Children Project please use the button below.