We have been working in Nepal since the earthquake in 2015 – even before the Snowland Children Foundation was founded! You can find the completed projects under “Successes”.

Our latest project is an ecological farm (Eco-Farm) with guest house and Eco-Café still in Timbu, only 65 km away from Kathmandu, but still a day’s journey by off-road vehicle!

In 2019 we have started this ambitious project, which should bring the village and especially the existing “Woman’s Association” (Cooperative) more money than for mere survival.

Our ultimate goal is to keep the youth in the village and prevent them from migrating to the “Moloch” Kathmandu or even further abroad and then missing in Nepal!

 In 2019 we built the first two large greenhouses. In 2020 we continued – despite Corona restrictions – and were able to build another 2 commercial greenhouses!

With these 4 greenhouses, the 35 women of the “Woman’s Association” in Timbu (with 85 families in the village) are able to generate a good additional income and of course to supply the village itself with more vegetables!

But – read the details yourself and look at the many interesting pictures! Here you can also upload two pdf with a detailed report and many pictures until spring 2020!

In 2020, of course, no one from Switzerland could visit Nepal because of the Corona pandemic. So we could only log and describe the two other greenhouses from a distance!

Ankunft in Kathmandu

Auch die Tauben dürfen NIE fehlen!

So kennt man das grösste Heiligtum ausserhalb Tibets

Der Boudhanath bei Nacht

Der Boudhanath von oben

Vermutlich gibt es in Kathmandu fast so viele Mönche wie Einwohner

Man kennt den Melamchi River

Ein einsamer Bagger – Tropfen auf den heissen Stein….

ohne Worte…

Der zweite und letzte Bagger, den wir sehen…

Dieses Haus hängt halb über dem Abgrund

Mutig stürzen wir uns in

Aber – wir schaffen es unbeschadet!

Die Zerstörung ist unfassbar – Man kann sich das Leid der ohnehin leidgeprüften Nepali nicht vorstellen!

Die letzten Impressionen…

praktisch nicht mehr wieder

Frauen gehen am Flussufer – oder das, was mal das Flussufer war…

Man erkennt praktisch nicht,

Häuser ragen gespenstisch aus dem Flussbett heraus. Hohle Augen schauen uns an…

Schwierig vorstellbar, dass dies mal ein grosser Fluss, der Melamchi war.

die Fluten. Ich habe Angst, dass wir

Immer wieder riesige Felsbrocken im Fluss

Aber noch schlimmer ist, dass die Regierung…

Bevor wir mühsamst in Timbu ankommen

Aus der Ferne wirkt alles normal

From close up it is quite unkempt

… and are horrified! Here is for months

Mein partner Lhakpa und Sohn mit Freundin

I am still in good spirits…

nothing has been done…..

After we were able to add 2 greenhouses in 2020, the year 2021 was marked by another catastrophe. As if Nepal was not already “shaken” enough, in the summer of 2021 the monsoon was so strong that the river Melamchi, which runs between Kathmandu and “our” Timbu, swelled so much that ALL bridges over the Melamchi were torn away. Thus, as of August 2021, there was no more access to Timbu, except on foot in several day marches over the mountains.

Thus, with regard to our further plans, our “hands were tied” and we could do nothing, except keep in touch by phone. Nevertheless, the women of the cooperative did not give up and continued with the 4 greenhouses! They were able to sell the vegetables in the surrounding area and also in their own village.

Only at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 022 the Nepalese government started to rebuild a first highway bridge over the Melamchi in Melamchi city! Before that HELVETAS Switzerland had helped to install some suspension bridges, so that at least pedestrians could cross the Melamchi again! For us this was of little use, because we have to transport construction material for our projects.

On April 25, I will travel again to India and then to Nepal, the first time since 2 1/2 years “Corona break”. Then we will see how to continue with our next sites, the Guesthouse and the Eco-Café.

Here are some more pictures from Timbu in March 2022, which we received from the residents. They show very nicely that the women are eager to keep their greenhouses running even without our presence!

The greenhouses seen from a distance

You can see very nice the protective fence around the greenhouses

The men in the village did a super job repairing the greenhouses themselves

Are peas also planted here (organic)?

The women have learned to mulch in the previous two years!

The tomato plantation comes up very healthy! The women have learned a lot at Nepal Agro Life!

The slips show the planting dates

In March come the first tomatoes

As if Nepal had not already had enough disasters! Now the monsoon in August is so strong that all bridges over the Melamchi River have been washed away.

The Melamchi, overflowing with this monsoon washes everything away!

Not only were the bridges washed away

After the first “Corona despair” we discussed for a long time with Nepal Agro Life and our partner Lhakpa Lama and then decided to build again 2 big greenhouses, despite Corona problems and -lockdowns!

In August, the two new greenhouses are up! This was an act of violence during the Corona crisis and multiple lockdowns in Nepal! Rajan has even found an agricultural engineer in the benachtbarten Melamchi so that he would not have brought from Kathmandu possibly Corona.

Here you can see all the greenhouses after completion in autumn 2020. Because of Corona, everything was delayed a bit and the start of construction was only in June 2020, because the materials came from India and were stuck for a long time at the border with Nepal.

The first two greenhouses – October 2019 – At the time, I couldn’t imagine it would be 2 years before I could travel to Nepal again….

The president of the Woman’s Association gives Rajan a big bag of tomatoes as a small thank you for all the help!
After all, he and his team had come to Timbu 6 times, first to build the greenhouses, but then for training and cultivation assistance! For example, the women learned how to make organic fertilizer and plant protection.

Our partner in Nepal, Lhakpa Lama, is also President of the Board of the Snowland Children Foundation Nepal. Besides Bianca-Maria, president of the foundation board of SCH in Switzerland and Rajan, the managing director and owner of Nepal Agro Life in Kathmandu, which has carried out the organization and construction of the greenhouses.

Everyone who loves the Himalayas and the countries there can remember the devastating earthquake in Nepal in April 2015! There were 2 epicenters and one of them was located in Helambu, an area northeast of Kathmandu, where the Lang Tang National Park is also located. The quake there went all the way to Kathmandu itself, where the upper part of the largest Buddhist shrine outside of Tibet, the Bouddanath lost its entire upper part. For years to come, during the construction work, one could see how terrible the devastation had been. In Kathmandu itself, even years after the earthquake, there was a tent city where people lived who had come from the surrounding villages where they had lost everything or even from Kathmandu itself, where several buildings had also collapsed.

In Helambu there is also the village of Timbu, where our two Tibetan-Nepalese partners Lhakpa Lama and Urkin Sherpa have good relations: Their families are originally from there, although they themselves have been living in Kathmandu for many years. Lhakpa built a new house in Timbu a few years ago, one of the very few (over 90% of all houses were destroyed) that was not completely destroyed in the 2015 earthquake. Thus, Lhakpa and Urkin know the most pressing needs of the village population. Thanks to their good local knowledge and excellent contacts with the local population, we have been able to implement our previous projects with the least possible financial resources.

In the meantime, Lhakpa has also established a foundation in Nepal: The Snowland Children Foundation Nepal, so to speak as a sister foundation of our foundation and – of course – financially dependent on our foundation. The advantage of having our own foundation in Nepal is that – we hope – one day we will be able to negotiate better with government agencies there and act independently.

There are – after the rural exodus after the earthquake – still 85 families living in Timbu, which is located at an altitude of 1,340 meters. It is one of the remote villages found in the hills at medium altitude in Nepal. It has a large catchment area with many very small hamlets or clusters of houses located further up the mountains. It takes several hours to get to some of these settlements by four-wheel drive jeep. But – even to Kathmandu, which is actually only 65 km away, you still need practically a whole day, because the roads in Nepal are so bad that you would be much faster with a horse. Timbu is nevertheless connected to Kathmandu by a bus line that leaves almost daily at 6:00 in the morning, but also takes the whole day.

In the first years after the earthquake nothing really happened in the completely destroyed villages. People lived in tents or later in makeshift corrugated iron houses. Many of them can still be seen today, 5 years after the severe earthquake. Many people have also moved away, and the question arises: How and from what do they live elsewhere? They have no money in our sense, they lived on the few grain, fruits and fruits, which their country gave. Some were able to find shelter with relatives in Kathmandu, where they all had to live even more cramped and with less than before the earthquake. Some of them ended up in the already mentioned huge tent camp in the middle of the big city.

There is less and less work for the many people in Kathmandu. Therefore, almost all of the young people are sitting “on packed suitcases” in the hope that one day they will be able to emigrate to the USA, Australia or Europe. Only – especially in Europe – the situation there has become extremely difficult in the meantime with the large streams of refugees from the East and Africa.

But also in 2020 there are still destroyed houses. 2 years ago the Nepalese government finally started to give some money to the people. After the earthquake they had received millions of dollars from many governments and relief organizations, of which until today nobody knows where they have remained… A maximum of 4,000 $ could be given to a family if they could prove that (1.) they had lived in one of the earthquake villages and, above all, that they were still living there and (2.) that they had already laid a foundation for a new house. But – where should they get the money for the foundation plate? So it still continues to this day that new houses are built quickly.

There has also been a lot of “fuss” about “earthquake-proof house construction” in our country, well-known NGOs have sent specialists. Maybe there are also some villages with such houses, but – in the normal case – the villagers build the houses as before, only less beautiful, because with concrete and less wood, so probably rather less earthquake-proof than before.

Even otherwise, the activities of the known NGOs are mostly limited to large posters at the village entrance about hygiene when washing hands and going to the toilet, just to build earthquake-proof houses and waste disposal. However, in 2016/17 Helvetas Switzerland installed a new water pipe in “our” village.

Snowland Children Foundation itself funded two community houses in Timbu and Embalama (a small hamlet located another 2 hours above Timbu) in 2016 with the first donation money. Then in 2017 we built a water pipeline in Embalama and in 2018 we also helped to build a school (Kakani) there. Thereby we were responsible for the exterior works and the shoring up of the steep mountain slope (for details see under
“Success 2016”,   2017 First projects of the Snowland  and 2018 The Kakani School Project

All actions in Nepal were only possible thanks to the initiative “One village helps the other” of our village Bichelsee-Balterswil (Thurgau). In 2017, we held the first benefit evening as an “ecumenical group” under the leadership of the Catholic pastoral area leader Daniela Albus. In 2019, a second event followed. Both were so successful that each time about 15,000 CHF were raised. But there were also other actions such as the “Fightsport-Night Wil” by Tenzin Shitsetsang (with 12,000 CHF!), the carol singers in Eschlikon (Thurgau) 2017 or the carol singers in Toggenburg 2019. We ourselves have been conducting Tibet evenings at Cinewil in Will since 2016 and can already look back on 11 successful film evenings!

In Timbu itself, besides the water pipeline, only the completely destroyed secondary school was rebuilt by Caritas, Switzerland, in 2018/19, but this was done quite magnificently and almost too beautiful for the conditions there.

What is our goal now for the Eco-Farm and Co?
The Snowland Children Foundation wants to contribute to stop the rural exodus, but also the rural exodus of the young generation! In Kathmandu, there is more and more crampedness and also poverty, THAT can not be a future. We also work here for and with Tibetans, who did not flee from the Chinese, but emigrated from Tibet several centuries ago.

The 10,000 or so Tibetans (with Nepalese passports) are one of the minorities in Nepal. They are not to be confused with the many Tibetans who have fled from Tibet to escape the Chinese, who live underground in Nepal and hope to leave for India or other countries. These Tibetans are living more and more dangerously as the communist government in Nepal is becoming more and more dependent on the Chinese and, according to recent treaties, has agreed to extradite any Tibetan the Chinese want to repatriate. The exit is so difficult because the Tibetans in China do NOT get a passport!

With the Eco-Farm we will hopefully be able to show not only the 85 families in Timbu, but the total of 10,000 people in the Helambu region, that it is worthwhile not only to stay in the country of Nepal, but even ON the land. We want to show that you can earn so much money with organic vegetable production that you can live a good life even in a remote mountain village, probably much better than in the overpopulated big city of Kathmandu. You have to show especially the young people that it is worthwhile to build up an existence in the countryside instead of surviving without a job and in poverty in the city.

The SCF guarantees that every project-related donation franc also goes into the selected project. Each step of the construction of the greenhouses will be documented by our partners and controlled 2 times a year by the foundation president herself on site (exception Corona-conditioned 2020 and spring 2021). These trips are privately financed by the president. All important information is subsequently documented on the webpage. Very current information and the ongoing trip report are communicated via Facebook (Snowland-Children). For any donations, donation receipts can be issued for tax purposes, a the foundation is recognized as a non-profit.

This time the land for the new greenhouses is very sloping.

The land must first be leveled at great expense. A wall even has to be built so that the water cannot run off too quickly!

The women have planted tomatoes again, which come very well!

Nepal Agro Life specialists also had a critical look at the first greenhouses of 2019

The women have already grown the tomato seedlings themselves with last year’s experience!

Nepal Agro Life specialists also had a critical look at the first greenhouses of 2019

The preparation of the oranic (organic) fertilizer goes quickly and easily with the experience of last year

Also this year the women have put cauliflower between the tomatoes

Here you can see very nicely the diversity in cultivation. The women have learned a lot last year and not forgotten!

Nepal Agro Life had also proposed fruits like strawberries for last year’s greenhouses. But – the women stay with tomatoes etc. for the time being, because they sell very well.

Training must be at every visit

Work is done even in the rain

The women prepare organic fertilizer according to instructions

Urkin checks a Timur (pepper) sapling

Lhakpa in our private car

The Women’s Cooperative in Timbu

The youth club that will help

With my partner Urkin

And again and again negotiations in Kathmandu

Everywhere there are still primitive tin huts, as they were after the earthquake.

Living in this form is terrible: hot in summer, freezing cold in winter, most often they have no windows …

My partner Lhakpa, a brother of my friend in Switzerland Dolma and I privately financed this stupa

Lhakpa’s private house (he himself lives in Kathmandu) has miraculously survived severe damage. The Eco-Café is set up here

This is also the only “guest house” in 2019: Here we want to help with the Eco-Café

This is what the “kitchen” of the inn looks like – all open to the front and a single table!