FAMILY LIFE: Every penny counts and every penny goes to children

In the first, captured in 2009, the youngsters look bewildered: their faces anxious, clothes worn and hair cropped close to their heads making it difficult to distinguish the girls from the boys. In the second, taken earlier this year, the same individuals are shown smiling and even laughing; a happy bunch no different from teenagers the world over.

The reason for this remarkable change is a small charity based in Highworth that has adopted a children’s home in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, in which 21 young people live.

The Friends of Angel’s Orphanage charity was set up by Ian, a retired west Swindon GP, and Rosa, an historian and former teacher and magistrate, who met the young people while helping out at a medical camp organised by their doctor son James.

Every month money raised by the Mathesons and their supporters go to help the home, which looks after ‘given up’ children – youngsters whose mothers have no means of making an income to feed and look after them – and orphans.

Nepal, located in the central Himalayas, is a developing nation that’s recently moved from a monarchy to a republic following a civil war. Its people encounter high levels of hunger and poverty and are recovering from a devastating earthquake in 2015.

Ian and Rosa had known little about the country when their son asked if they could join Health Partnership Nepal, with which he had become involved through St George’s Hospital, where he was studying medicine after leaving the army.

“Ian had recently retired as a GP, and I underwent a crash course in testing eyes so that I could help provide people with spectacles in Nepal,” explains Rosa, who has four children of her own, and three grandchildren.

“We travelled there with 15 kilos of used glasses, which we managed to get Qatar Airways to accept as extra baggage.”

At that point the couple had no intentions of starting one charity, let alone three, but this changed after James was approached by a man who explained he had a large family with lots of sick children and no money for medicine or doctors.

“We went around to where the man lived and found several youngsters living in horrible conditions,” says Rosa.

“There was no running water and a squat toilet in the basement for 24 people. The children had lots of skin conditions, throat infections and were very dehydrated and anxious.

“When we first saw the children they literally won our hearts. Despite being the way they were, they were resilient.

We couldn’t walk away from them. We decided that rather than giving money to charity and not knowing where it would end up, we would make a difference in a manageable way and really change their lives. We told them we were here for the long run.”

On returning home to Highworth, where they’ve lived for 20 years, Rosa and Ian set up the Friends of Angel’s Orphanage, initially approaching friends and family for help, and were able to move the children to more suitable accommodation within six months. The youngsters’ daily care is generally overseen by Aishwarya, the 28-yearold wife of the man who first approached them, and the orphanage is run as a family unit, with the young people regarding themselves as brothers and sisters.

For the past eight years, the Friends of Angel’s Orphanage has sent regular money for food, rent, clothing and school fees, as well as for sending Aishwarya on courses to enable her to make her own contribution to the family.

Ian, Rosa and fellow trustee Brian Mildenhall go to Nepal twice a year, for six weeks at a time, to make sure the funds go to the right places, assist on a practical basis and develop networks of ‘friends’ for the charity, such as the Himalayan Gurkhas Rotary Club, which provided a trusted channel for money in the early days. These contacts came into their own during the Nepalese earthquake, when it was particularly hard to get supplies to people.

Recently the children have moved to a more modern home, although compared with youngsters in UK their lives are still pretty tough.

One of their most important tasks involves drawing off enough water when it’s available and putting it in storage tanks.

“All of the trustees are volunteers and pay our own way: we say that every penny counts and every penny goes to the children,” says Ian.

“In the first three months we held 27 fundraising events – it was a lot and we were firefighting all the time in the first year.

“Nowadays we raise around £30,000 a year. There are hundreds of orphanages in Kathmandu and most of them are run as businesses. Their children don’t look like our children. Our children don’t look as though they live in an institution.”

As well as supporting the Friends of Angel’s Orphanage, Ian and Rosa’s visits prompted them to set up two other charities aimed at empowering Nepalese women and helping them to make a difference to their lives.

The Book Project assists Nepalese initiatives to educate, enable and empower women and help them become full and active members of society. So far it’s produced two volumes to help with fundraising: the fascinating and poignant ‘a day in the life of 100 women in Britain’, which has netted £15,000, and Earthquake Nepal 2015 The Human Story, which has brought in money for other Earthquake projects.

Funds from this charity have been used to buy a scooter for a young doctor to speed up travelling times around the remote area she looks after, assist four girls in setting up a legally registered adventure company and support the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants project through which women grow plants used for therapeutic treatments. A recent idea has involved helping women to grow tomatoes with which to barter for other goods.

The third charity started by the Mathesons provides Nepalese women with reusable sanitary protection – or Freedom Kit Bags.

“Having access to sanitary wear is something we take for granted in this country,” explains Rosa, who pays seamstresses in Nepal to make the assortment of brightlypatterned pads.

“Nepalese women have to deal with the stigma that is still often associated with menstruation.

“When Nepalese women have their periods they are called ‘chhaupadi’, which translates to ‘untouchable being’.

“They are often put out of the home and made to sleep rough or in hides or with the goats.”

Each of the Freedom Kit Bags costs £25 to fund and Rosa and Ian have already given out more than 660.

Ensuring there’s always enough money to cover the rent and associated costs of a Nepalese orphanage, and looking after two other charitable initiatives – and bringing together volunteers to help rebuild a village shattered by the earthquake - means Rosa and Ian are as busy now as when they were in paid employment, but they say it’s something from which they experience a great deal of fulfilment.

“We’re very proud that a small amount of money with the right input and right people managing it can make a massive difference to people’s lives,” says Rosa.

“We believe that when you see a need you should try and help. We’ve been so lucky in our lives – they’ve not been easy lives but we’ve been blessed in so many ways. When our energy flags we look at photographs taken of the children when we first met them and eight years later and it reinvigorates us.”

For more information, visit www.the100womenbookproject.com