Our Work in Nepal

This section details our objectives and activities in Nepal. We work through partner organisations and also through our own registered non-Government organisation (NGO).

We have two key areas of operation in Nepal – in Humla, in the mountains in the far North West, and Kathmandu, the capital city in the valley beneath the mountains.


The Humla District
Humla is a region in North West Nepal, bordering Tibet, which is so remote that it is considered so even by Nepalis. On any development measure, Humla fares poorly – they have the nation’s lowest literacy rates, maternal and infant mortality well above the Nepali average, and food shortages each winter when families are sometimes snowed in for months. Access to the region is by two weeks walk from the nearest road, or light plane from the Indian border to Simikot, the ‘capital’, at around 9,000 feet. From there, villages are only accessible by foot or by horse.

Communities in the Humla region suffer severe disadvantage and poverty, which have become entrenched as a result of the region’s remoteness and harsh conditions. In particular the situation for children and young people is dire. With very poor quality education and healthcare facilities, poor housing, inadequate sanitation and other basic infrastructure, limited food supply, almost no cash economy and thus limited useful employment in adulthood it is difficult for communities to sustain their children.

In addition, the recent political upheaval in Nepal has contributed to difficulties in Humla. From 1996 until last year, there was in effect a civil war in the country, with the Maoists pitted against the Army, Government and King. Tens of thousands died in the fighting, and the most bitter battles took place in the mountainous regions. There, many families were expected to provide one child to the Maoists for service in the war. As a result, many families sent their children out of Humla to Kathmandu, desperately trying to keep them safe. The result of this is that thousands of children have ended up in Kathmandu in sub-standard homes run by opportunists, at serious risk of trafficking and abuse.

Not only are the Humli children in Kathmandu at serious risk, but the communities from which they came are decimated by their departure over the ten years of civil unrest. Many villages in Humla are now populated largely by grandparents, mothers and babies – the men are working overseas where there is a cash economy, and the children are in Kathmandu or other places as determined by their trafficker. This has huge implications for the region and we hope to assist in rebuilding and working with people in Humla to mitigate the impact of these changes in the demographic make-up of these remote populations.

Humli communities are unlikely to achieve any significant improvement in their living conditions without outside intervention, assistance and capacity building. When we first began to work in Humla in 1999 we undertook a baseline study of community needs that showed us the breadth of assistance the community would require to become self-sustaining. We also found that although the needs were extreme, the high cost of transportation and minimal communication from the regional centres had resulted in the exclusion of this area from other development programs and services.

Humli people get forgotten in Nepal. They are in a difficult to access district, they speak a dialect difficult for others to understand, and they find it very challenging to adapt to Kathmandu and other cities after life in the most remote mountains. It is for this reason that The ISIS Foundation decided to focus on this region – it deserves not to be forgotten. We have a long-term commitment to Humla and its people.


ISIS’s Development Projects in Humla

One Village at a Time
Tibetan Medical Care
Emergency Rescue of Trafficked Children
Dealing with Trafficking in Humla


 One Village at a Time

The ISIS Foundation has been working in Humla since around 1997 and was one of our first project areas. We have worked with a range of partner organisations, focusing always on health and educational initiatives that will make a positive difference in the lives of children.

We began our work with a baseline study , undertaken by Dr Kimber Haddix Mckay, who is our part-time Humla and Research Manager and an Associate Professor at the University of Montana. We now support and assist a fully established, well-organised and ongoing holistic community development (HCD) project, which is a key part of The ISIS Foundation’s Humla Development Plan.

The HCD project is now operated on a village-by-village basis, and involves working with each village to become involved in a programme to improve the health and educational level of their communities in a sustainable way. A decade’s experience working with many villagers in the region has clearly demonstrated to us that four major issues - elementary indoor lighting, a smokeless stove inside the home for cooking and heating, a pit latrine, and access to clean, fresh drinking water are the major issues the local communities identify repeatedly to be of greatest importance for their development. Our approach considers these four projects as one ‘Family’ which cannot be separated, and need to be implemented alongside each other. We believe that to do so creates a synergistic energy within villages, and the benefits to villagers multiply when the major problems of a community can be addressed and improved comprehensively.

This involves training people (and sometimes subsidising equipment) so that they can acquire, operate and maintain a combination of a number of project components including four key components (the ‘Family of Four’), of solar lighting inside the home, smokeless metal stoves, pit latrines and clean drinking water. If the village needs further assistance we can provide training and help with elements of the ‘Family of Four – Plus’ – which could include non-formal education (literacy training) for mothers and out-of-school children, training and construction of a greenhouse and solar driers, slow sand water filters, and nutritional food training for mothers, to reduce malnutrition in babies. There are currently 12 villages taking part in the project.

We work with new villages each year on the basis of community need and also take into account the views of local government and Maoist staff. We also spend quite some time following up on previous villages in which we have worked, to ensure that the projects continue to operate effectively. At times we need to provide additional training or help communities to put measures in place to ensure the long-term sustainability of these initiatives.

In addition to our village by village work, the HCD Project also incorporates some peripheral projects that benefit Humla as a whole, such as the Smokeless Metal Stove Project (where top quality stoves are subsidised and sold to outlying villages, to encourage them to become involved in the major programme). We also support a student each year to attend a 2-year course at Karnali Technical School, to build capacity in the district and ensure that there are locals who can undertake work in Humla in sustainable technology in the future.

The HCD projects have a very strong research base and this continues on a day-to-day basis in Humla. This research includes: To date ISIS has provided services to approximately 4,200 people in living in extreme disadvantage in Humla. We have co-authored over 30 academic papers on newly developed high altitude sustainable technologies and holistic community development project approaches, and presented these at conferences from Australia to China and all over North America. In 2007, we began an innovative program where engineers working for Engineers Without Borders Australia are volunteering for up to 6 months to provide expert advice and train local people whilst living in Humla.

Our dream is one day to see the whole of Humla benefiting from these initiatives – with a population of ~ 48,000 people, this dream could well become a reality within the next decade. We also dream of having a ‘training centre’ in Simikot where people who are trying to implement HCD projects in other high altitude regions can come and learn from us and teach us what they know.

^ Back to top



Tibetan Medical Care

The ISIS Foundation has hired a fantastic Tibetan Doctor, Dr. Kelsang Dorje, who roams the Humla region for 8 months of the year treating women, children and villagers. He refers people with critical conditions to Kathmandu for western medical treatment. He works in Humla despite the difficulties posed by the civil war, which continues to pose major challenges for people working in the mountains.

This project provides Tibetan medical services to around 4,000 people in the Humla district each year, and it increases local awareness and use of both allopathic and Tibetan medical treatment options. This is absolutely critical for these very remote communities who have such limited access to even the most basic health care.

Feedback from people in Humla indicates that this project is hugely valued. Nepali government staff are also keenly interested in this, as it provides treatment whilst preserving (and even enhancing) the cultural integrity of the district.

^ Back to top



Emergency Rescue of Trafficked Children

The ISIS Foundation has, to date, agreed with the mountain communities that we work with that it is vital to run programmes in the mountains of Nepal, rather than becoming involved in the ‘brain drain’ from the mountains to city life in Kathmandu. However as the war in Nepal deepened, we discovered that families in Humla were being advised that one child from every family should join the ranks of the Maoist army. As a result of this and also of fear from the ongoing conflict in the mountains between the Maoists and the Nepali army and police, many parents began sending their children for safety to Kathmandu, with distant relatives. Many of these relatives misrepresented their intentions and in fact kept the children in appalling conditions in huge homes in the city, and the children were at risk of abuse, illness, disease, and trafficking to India and Thailand for the sex trade and circuses.

We were in the process of working out how we could incorporate long term help to these children into our other Humla development projects when we heard of 29 Humli kids living in terrible conditions in one home, in May 2004. After sending in an assessment team, we spent the next two years trying to get help to these children, via the government, the police, and their parents. We provided emergency care as best we could despite the traffickers still having custody at that stage. Over the two years that we fought to help the children, we found an additional 110 kids in similar circumstances in Kathmandu.

Between January and August 2006, we finally obtained custody of the children – around 90 of whom came to us over three days in late August. Our immediate concern was to work with local authorities to finalise custody and place the children in secure and healthy accommodation in children’s homes. As a result 10 homes were (very quickly!) established. These homes now house 139 children (35 girls and 104 boys) aged between 5 and 20 years of age, and they are run by The ISIS Children’s Foundation.

After the initial panic of getting the children into safety, this project has become a part of our work in Humla development as we work out how to care for the children in the context of the development of the region as a whole. This has been a massive process and has included a range of initiatives, including: development of a ‘case management’ system that is effective in a Nepali context and ensures that every child is considered individually and not lost to a ‘system’; finding the children’s parents and siblings and reconnecting them, so that repatriation is a longer term possibility; working with the children’s families to assess the kids villages of origin, to see if we can repatriate them as the political situation stabilises, and the capacity building of around 70 staff to care for and work with these abused kids.

Although the children’s homes provide immediate day-to-day care of these internally displaced kids, they go beyond the provision of either emergency relief or welfare. Essential aspects of the project are working with the relevant communities to determine the best long-term goals for their children. This includes careful research and planning as to how children can best be cared for and educated in severely disadvantaged Humli communities.

For the story of one of the children we have assisted, Nayan Singh Nepali, please click here.

^ Back to top



Dealing with Trafficking in Humla

We are working with a Humli NGO, The Himalayan Innovative Society , to assess the possibility of repatriating kids to Humla. We are also working with the community to try to reduce the incidence of child trafficking in the future.

The project involves a range of initiatives, including: finding the children’s parents and siblings and reconnecting them, so that repatriation is a longer term possibility; working with the children’s families to assess their villages of origin to determine whether repatriation is viable as the political situation stabilises, and developing awareness-raising programs relating to child trafficking for families in Humla.

On a larger scale, we are aiming to learn about and redress areas in the development sector which have been neglected in this arena, namely to:



^ Back to top