Make a donation
As a charity, we’re of course open to a general donation at any time. Just use our secure donate button above which works for any major currency. That’s the simplest and quickest.
However, below you’ll find three more specific interest areas and historical donations that might inspire a discerning donor who wishes to take a little more time over deciding upon a special gift. Feel free to contact Philip if you would like to discuss anything that inspires you from the opportunities below.
A gift towards education
In 2023, Nigel and Pepie, who live in Ireland, offered to make a major donation to support our work, stating a particular interest in education. Nigel put it beautifully as giving “with a warm hand rather than a cold one”! Thanks to their generosity, we were able to build this new school block and carry out a major refurbishment at Bhatighadi School. Once severely under-resourced, the school now matches the standard of private schools attended by more privileged children.
Our Founder, Philip Holmes, is a very keen hobby mosaic artist and a bird lover. He combines his passions by making bird mosaics that we install at schools that we support, doing so ‘in memoriam’ from gifts in lieu of flowers after a supporter or friend passes away.
The cost of a mosaic is £1,000 to cover material costs (Philip uses Mexican and Venetian glass and fuses glass in his own kiln) and time. All of this is donated towards education projects.
In 2024, Philip installed this mosaic at Bhatighadi School in memory of his cousin, Lily Taylor, whose late husband had also been a teacher.
Each Christmas, we take part in ‘The Big Give’ appeal which raises funds for our projects in the following year. All donations made online automatically double in value.
And one of those projects is to pay the £5,000 salary of an additional support teacher at Bhatighadi School, Jina Tamang. Jina is a fabulous extra pair of hands, but also a great role model for the girls who attend the school. She’s living proof that an education can lead to a career!
We’d be very happy to send you a reminder when a Big Give campaign launches so that you can make one donation that has twice the impact!
A gift for training women
Our largest gift ever came from The McGough Foundation in the UK that has funded not only education projects but also major reforestation activities, both conventional and Miyawaki. See the Founder, Gemma McGough, explaining the donor value she has experienced from her Foundation’s grants.
We are very happy to accept gifts large or small for planting forests. It costs about £10 to plant a square metre of rural forest, £18.75 per square metre of urban forest (covering all costs, including the JCB!). Usually, we plant six trees in each square metre of Miyawaki plantation.
In 2024. we planted trees at one of our urban forests in Kathmandu following a bequest of £500 from the estate of the late Mrs Anne Roberts. This is just one way in which a gift in a Will can have a lasting impact at no cost to the benefactor.
A gift for the environment
We support young women across nearly all our projects – from employing young women who are deaf in our Kathmandu plantations to providing bursaries that help female students in south Nepal complete their education.
But there’s one lesser-known initiative we’d love you to consider supporting. Through our Lily’s Leaves programme, we train young women from the Madheshi community in basic tailoring. Each course supports around 16 students, and when they finish, we provide them with a sewing machine, table, and starter materials – giving them the tools to launch their own small business, alone or with fellow course graduates. A sewing machine costs £75, and sponsoring a student’s training is £170 per month. Every contribution helps!
