Help, Inspire and Protect kids in Nepal and India

My dearest friends,

I'm on my way to Nepal and India, where I will volunteer and will lead others in helping the local communities, especially disadvantaged children. It was my lifelong dream and now, it is the time. 

While many non-profit organizations generate donations for worthy causes with the best of intentions, often only a small amount of it gets to the destination. I've decided to raise money on my own and deliver my skills, supplies, meals and some clothing directly to the communities and kids I visit.
I will go volunteer in various schools and monasteries teaching Arts and English to kids aged 5-16 years old. This is about 500+ children in total.

Art is something that I grew up with and something that fills me with joy. Art is meditation and therapy. It helps to stay in the present, be imaginative, express the inner feelings and release them, it brings happiness. 

I would like to share my skills with the poor kids of Nepal and India that were simply unlucky to be born the restrictive environment of the third world.  For art classes I will need to bring with me the basic art/school supplies that is simply not available in those areas. Hopefully, I can raise enough funds so I can provide for at least a week of meals for all the kids in the school, while I'll be staying in those places and creating art projects.  

This image of me teaching arts in the summer camp in the NYC preschool. I will never forget how fascinated those innocent eyes would look at me and how creative they all were. Kids imagination is just so fearless!


Knowledge is power and takes you a long way. No one can take away this gift from you. That's why my main focus on the kids and their education.

Art inspires and empowers the most underserved kids and their communities to achieve their potential and transform their lives.

If you can dream and imagine, you create anything in your life.

One of the places I will volunteer is an elementary school near Kathmandu where poor kids from suburbs and villages come to get basic education. The school is really old and requires a lot of repairs. The roof is leaking, electricity is constantly shutting down, there is no clean water access and they don't have computers in the whole school.  I found out about this school through a wonderful organization Waters From Heaven  that supports art education in the rural places. You can click on the backlink to see their work for this and not only schools around Nepal.

At this school we will create together with kids an Art Wall to beautify the dull walls of the school. I will ask one of the talented artist from my ST.ART agency  to help me create the mockup design and then we will recreate it together with kids on the walls of the school. This mural will inspire kids for a brighter future and will bring some colors to their daily lives. Imagine how they will feel happy and proud that they participated in beautification on their school and painted together something so amazing? Just look at the images of how old and grey the school condition is. For this I will need the budget to buy the essential paint materials. 

See the images of the current state of this school.

See what can happen with your support.

(mural by Jason Naylor)

(murals by Sonni)


Next, I will visit one of the oldest Tibetan Buddhist monastics school Drepung Gomang in India. It was established by the Tibetan refugee monks who fled from the Chinese oppression and established the monastery in the protected area south of Bombay in India.  I had to be introduced to monastery's administration by one of their trusted people and wait for 3 months a permit. The monastery now counts about 2,000 monks and about 350 of them are kids age 5-17 years old.

I once read in the wonderful book "The Orbital Perspective" by astronaut Ron Garan that sometimes charity organizations bring something that isn't really needed or can't be used due to the outdated environment (for example, I can't really bring computers to the school in Nepal because they don't have a proper electrical provision in the school itself, so first thing will be to install the solar panels to provide electricity and then the computers can be brought).

So I asked the administrators in the monastery what are their most critical needs. Their answer was reusable rain ponchos for the monsoon seasons. The cost of those is $8-10, depending on the size. I will need 350 of rain ponchos, so it's about $3,500.
 
Please, please, please!

Donate as much as you can so together we can inspire and empower underserved kids through artistic opportunities and bring the resources they really need. 

If you can't donate now, please, share to your friends and family. It is so important to spread the word.

I'll be sharing with you the outcomes of you efforts.

For donations over $100, we will send thank you notes and art projects made by those kids; 
Tshirt with the wall design for the donations of $300 +;
A cool surprise gift if more than $700.

Art is universal. Hope is universal.

There are so many kids in the world who don't have access to basic things. Let's make their life a bit more colorful and happy.

Kids are our future and hope. Let's pay it forward.

Yours truly,
Kamilla

xx Namaste