Early morning
Everyone is up, washing at the outdoor tap. Breakfast is chapati or a bowl of noodle soup.
Our story
Why Serki and Laxmi opened the home
Serki Sherpa grew up at the Buddha Memorial Children’s Home, sponsored by Heike Yamuna Kiefer, and stayed until he finished Grade 12. He taught for five years. In 2015 he and his wife Laxmi rented a house in Gokarneshwor and opened Yamuna Children’s Home.
A letter from the president
Namaste. Tashi Delek.
I would like to thank Heike Yamuna Kiefer from Germany, and our friends here in Nepal, who did so much to help establish Yamuna Children’s Home.
I have spent five years working in education. I began by volunteering at Great Compassion Boarding School for a year, then five months in Pokhara and five months in Lomanthang, Upper Mustang, in 2010. After that I worked in schools and children’s homes in Kathmandu. Today I am here at Yamuna Children’s Home, and I also teach at Shwet Barahi School. I am happy living alongside these children, and happiest when I get the chance to help children who are genuinely in need — in the streets, in remote villages.
I grew up in a children’s home myself. I stayed at the Buddha Memorial Children’s Home until I finished Grade 12. I feel very fortunate to have had that chance to stay and to study, because my own family could not send me to school with a pencil, a copybook and books. Even now, there is still no school in my village.
Yamuna Children’s Home was established to serve children in need: education, lodging, food, and the activities that let a child develop in body and in mind. Nepal is a country where you can still find villages without a school, and children who have never seen one. The reasons are financial hardship, political instability, geography, and a lack of education and awareness that passes from one generation to the next. Yamuna Children’s Home is here for exactly those children.
Serki Sherpa
President and co‑founder
How it happened
How it grew, from 1995 to today
- 1995
One sponsored child
Heike Yamuna Kiefer, trekking in the Himalaya, meets children with no way of getting to school. She sponsors one child’s boarding‑school education. Her travelling companions join in.
- 2002
A charity is formed in Germany
The informal group becomes a registered association, the Buddha Memorial Welfare Trust e.V., bringing children from remote regions to school in Kathmandu.
- 2000s
Serki grows up at Buddha Memorial
Serki Sherpa — Heike Yamuna’s first Nepalese godchild — lives at the Buddha Memorial Children’s Home until he completes Grade 12.
- 2010
Five years of teaching
Serki volunteers at Great Compassion Boarding School, then spends five months in Pokhara and five months in Lomanthang, Upper Mustang, before teaching in Kathmandu.
- 2014
Namaste Welfare e.V.
As the German association’s work grows beyond Nepal, it is renamed Namaste Welfare e.V.
- 2015
Yamuna Children’s Home opens
Serki and his wife Laxmi rent a house in Gokarneshwor, on the edge of Kathmandu, and open the home. Children arrive from small mountain villages, and from families who cannot manage housing and school.
- Since
A permanent home
The Swiss organisations cuorEmani and Mani per il Nepal buy land and build a new house. The children move out of the rented house and into a permanent one.
Life in the house
What a day here actually looks like
On school days the children wash and eat early, walk to school for eight, and are back by three. Saturday is the day off.
8am – 3pm
School. Shwet Barahi School is a three‑minute walk away and teaches Nursery through Year 10, Sunday to Friday. Serki has taught there himself.
Meals
Dal bhat — rice and lentils — with vegetables from the home’s own garden. Simple, but grown a few steps from the kitchen. Egg or chicken once a week.
Saturdays
The one day without school. The house is cleaned together, laundry is done, the garden gets its attention — and then there is football, dancing and table tennis.
Who stands behind the home
A small home with steady friends
The home is run in Nepal, by Nepali house parents, and supported by a handful of long‑standing partners in Europe.
Namaste Welfare e.V. — Germany
The association founded by Heike Yamuna Kiefer in 2002. It coordinates child sponsorships for the home and supports projects in Nepal and India, together caring for more than seventy children and young people.
cuorEmani & Mani per il Nepal — Switzerland
These two Swiss organisations bought the land and paid for the new house the children live in now. Before that, the home rented its building.
Our board and friends in Nepal
Board member Nima Dorje Sherpa has given consistent support to the home and its children, including donating a full set of new school uniforms. Friends in Kathmandu helped establish the home in the first place.
Sponsorships pay most of the home’s running costs.
Sponsorships cover the day‑to‑day costs of the house, and we are still looking for more sponsors.