Hands-On Life-Saving | In 1996, on a visit to Kanti Children's Hospital in Kathmandu, Olga Murray discovered a five-year-old girl who was hospitalized with a severe lung infection caused by malnourishment. Her infection was cured, but she was discharged even though she had gained only 8 ounces and could not stand or walk. The hospital needed the bed for acutely ill children. As we discovered, it wasn't uncommon for children to be discharged as soon as their infections were under control, even though they were still pathetically undernourished.

In 1998, we launched the Nutritional Rehabilitation Home (NRH) with the recommendation and cooperation of a prominent pediatrician in the only general children's hospital in the country. The NRH provides hands-on life-saving services that restore the child's health and educates the mother in nutritious food preparation and child care. The NRH is extraordinarily effective. It is located close to a major general hospital in the Kathmandu area. It has a big vegetable garden and plenty of space where mothers can learn about nutrition and newly-strong children can learn how to play at our playground.

Not long after we first established the NRH, Som Paneru, NYOF's Executive Director in Kathmandu, became aware of another desperate situation where we simply had to see if we could help. In the rural Dang district, young girls are sold into bonded servitude by their impoverished families. Typical of NYOF, we were able to mobilize immediately. Led by a volunteer from Dang, we made an exploratory visit to the area. We worked closely with villagers to develop an innovative, effective means of preventing the practice of selling daughters. This Indentured Daughters Program was so successful that it quadrupled in size from the first year to the next, and since then more girls have been saved than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams. Instead of being sold away, thousands girls now remain with their families—and are going to school!

When NYOF was profiled on "The Oprah Show" in May 2002, thousands of donors offered support for this project as well as NYOF's other lifesaving programs. That support enabled us to take on more girls. But thousands more need our help, and our assistance must continue year after year while the girls are in school, since we make a commitment to support their education once they have been freed from bondage. We are working with this community and these girls for the long haul. Our goal is to eliminate the conditions that have fostered the abhorrent practice of selling daughters in the first place.

In the decades we have been working with children in Nepal, NYOF has expanded not only in the number of children supported (from five to thousands), but also in the ways in which we help them. What has not changed is the intense sense of satisfaction and joy we get from our relationship with these lively and loving kids, and the admiration we feel at their courage and joy in overcoming the dreadful experiences of their early lives. With your help, we can continue to transform the lives of some of the most destitute children on Earth.

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