Our History

I, K.B.Shah, co-founder and Director of HORAC, was born in very remote area, Rukum district Gotamkot-VDC. Though the country has developed a lot since I was child, it needs around 6 days walk to reach my home after we get off from the bus and it is the place with no electricity. It was around 1996, when the big war between government and Maoist started in my district Rukum which lasted for around 10 years (until 2006). During the war, nearly 14,000 people were killed over the whole of Nepal and most of them were from my district. Many children lost one or both of their parents and were regarded as homeless ones. I was really touched by the children’s tears for their parents.
After the war, I made a plan to start an orphanage where children could get the parental love they deserve. Firstly I planned to keep them in the nearby orphanage, but the people in-charge of the orphanage I choose ran away leaving the children behind. At that time I had some money which I had collected by selling my house of Gotamkot to migrate to Kathmandu with my family. Seeing the condition of those helpless children I changed my mind and decided to open an orphanage for the children. I brought all the helpless and needy children of the remote areas here in Kathmandu and managed home for them to stay. In the beginning, we were with a group of 11 members to govern and support the home, but the members were rather passive, and slowly they denied helping and the care of the children came solely to my wife and me. We had a very hard time. At that time we went to various shops, houses in different areas just to collect foods and money for children.

I moved forward with hard efforts to ensure a bright future of children. We managed to collect one handful of rice from the people of local community staying in Kupondole daily (the place where our orphanage is located). Unfortunately this practice is weakened in 2009, as many of them got the impression that we receive effluent support from foreign well wishers who visited us, and we still have to see how many of them we can convince to continue their crucial support.

Since April 2009 our situation has changed. The government of Nepal has closed several children’s homes who could not fulfill the standards, and we also have to work hard to comply and renew our registration. We are still receiving some support from the local community, but also depend largely on donations by friends from abroad. Among others as a consequence of the world financial crisis, the recurrent contributions of these friends fall far short of our monthly needs. To keep our home running we want more and more supports from the new donors as well so that hard time we are facing now can goes in a smooth way. We hope for regular support of both the old and new donors to secure the life of the children. And it will also help us in different projects we are going to make for the sake of child welfare.