Introduction to the Umbrella Foundation
Nepal's children in crisis Ten years of civil war in Nepal has displaced tens of thousands of children from remote Maoist-controlled conflict zones. Child traffickers take advantage of this crisis by making false promises of bringing children into the safe haven of the Kathmandu Valley and placing them in top boarding schools. For this "service" parents pay relatively vast sums to these men. But instead, these traffickers simply abandon the children in destitute orphanages in Kathmandu and cut off contact with the parents. There are over 30,000 children in orphanages the Kathmandu Valley, a significant number of whom have been trafficked into the capital in this manner. Equally worrying is the fact that only a tiny percentage of the over 600 children's homes in the Kathmandu Valley are properly monitored.

Umbrella Foundation rescues trafficked children
The Umbrella Foundation provides care for more conflict-displaced and trafficked children in the Kathmandu Valley than any other NGO. In cooperation with the government's Child Welfare Board, the Umbrella Foundation (an INGO registered in Nepal) has rescued 210 Nepali children living in destitute conditions - most of them from illegal orphanages set up by traffickers - and provided them with a safe home and excellent care, education, and access to medical attention.

Umbrella Foundation gives Nepal's children a future
For the last two years, Umbrella has focused exclusively on rescuing, housing, and feeding trafficked and destitute children. Now that the civil war is over, however, Umbrella can focus on reuniting the children with their families when conditions permit or, when reunification is not possible, providing them the education and vocational skills they need to ensure they can find gainful employment when they become adults.

We will take a two-track approach to giving a future to these children:

• Reuniting trafficked children with their families Many children in our care have families in rural districts of Nepal. With the war over, we hope to reunite many of these children with family members providing it is safe to do so and the child will have an opportunity to attend school in their village. Umbrella is committed to supporting education costs for children returning to their villages.
  
  
• Providing long-term care and vocational training in a rural setting For children with no family to return to, or whose village is deemed either unsafe, has no school, or is dangerously impoverished, Umbrella will provide a safe home. In the village of Gurje, located in the Nuwakot Valley, a rural valley north of the overcrowded and impoverished Kathmandu Valley, Umbrella hopes to open several of children's homes with land donated by the government of Nepal (as they have already agreed), renovate the school, and provide necessary training to give children the skills they need to ultimately return to the villages from where they were displaced during the war.