Meeting our Sponsored Child.
Trish and Gerry Kerr from Celbridge, Co Kildare recently travelled to Nepal to visit their sponsored child. Not only did they meet Sujit and his family – they stayed in his family home for three days and were guests of the village in the remote district of Bara.
Here is their story…
“The journey to Dharmangar through the mountains was breath-taking. Although only 140km or so, the road surfaces are so poor it took us nearly 7 hours! We arrived to the village about 3 hours late and there must have been about 500-1000 people waiting for us! A sea of people there to greet us. I think we were the first sponsors to stay in the village. We have been sponsoring a child with ActionAid for about 30 years – since the day we got married.
Meeting our Sponsored Child, Sujit
Sujit is the third child that we have sponsored, and we have been sponsoring him for about 6-7 years. So it was great to finally meet him, his mum and dad and grandparents. They welcomed us into to their home – it had no glass, no doors, and no electricity.
Everyone was fascinated that we had chosen to stay in their village. All the kids were looking in the window – there was a door but it was just a curtain. The curtain was on the outside so we had no control of the curtain, we didn’t mind! We struggled to sleep the first night but we were so tired we slept every night after that.
The People We Met
Over the three days we got to meet so many incredible people. We were especially blown away by the women’s group in the village – they were amazing. Their three main aims are to end domestic violence, to end child marriage and to secure legal ownership of land. They also have a communal land rental system – everyone puts in a few rupees per week and they use that to rent and farm land.”
The Kerr’s were so impressed by the work they saw that since returning home they have decided to fundraise to: build a Community Childcare Centre, fund teacher training for 20 teachers, and to build two classrooms to enable 16 and 17 year old girls to access education in the village they visited.
Watch a video of Trish and Gerry, speaking about the trip on their return:
