Shambhala charity is an organization established by committed persons with the pure motivation to help fellow human beings who need immediate support to sustain their precious lives. We all live on our common planet, the mother earth, and as common citizens of the planet, we should care for our fellow citizens who live in abject poverty and lack opportunities. Some destitute people die early age just due to a lack of timely medical treatment and proper food. Many poor people die because they do not have anything to cover their bodies during the harsh winter cold. Some helpless mothers watch their dear baby die just because she does not have money to buy her medicine. The news of the death of children dying in huge numbers due to epidemic is quite common in poor communities. Our hearts bleed when we visit some of the poor villages and see mothers dying after childbirth because they do not have anything to eat.

Shambhala Charity was established inspired by the realization that those of us leading our lives in comfort and happiness should give a little to these needy people, our fellow human beings who are suffering to the extreme, to save their lives, and to bring smiles back to their faces.
Shambhala Charity is a non-profit organization run by volunteers deeply touched by the sufferings being faced by these needy people in Nepal. Each organization members is highly committed to working together selflessly to help such fellow human beings. Apart from providing physical support, we share loving-kindness and compassion among these underprivileged people especially the children and women, providing them medical, educational, and livelihood opportunities.

Objective:

The prime objective of Shambhala Charity is to run various programs, transparently, directly benefitting the poor and underprivileged communities by

• Health services: Support emergency treatment to persons who will die due to lack of medical treatment due to poverty. Organize medical treatment camps; provide support to establish medical centers and hospitals in vulnerable areas. Run health awareness programs, and assist in providing basic health care skills in such areas focusing on preventive medication.
• Education: Support education to the poor children in remote areas by the construction of schools, arrangements of trained teachers, providing books, computers, and other educational materials, and arranging volunteers from abroad.
• Natural disaster relief: Provide immediate relief to save a life in case of a natural disaster. Assist in rehabilitation programs for the victims. Run awareness programs about various natural disasters among the communities.
• Agriculture: Help poor farmers increase their productivity, diversify their production skills, introduce modern farming methods, and assist them in marketing their products.
• Dying Culture: Run programs on conservation and protection of dying cultural and natural ancient heritages employing awareness, enhancing local skills, and reconstruction of physical ancient monuments.
• Women empowerment: Run various programs on skill development based on local products ensuring smooth income generation. Conduct empowerment programs such as leadership, cooperatives, primary health care, informal education, etc.
• Child protection: Support poor families to educate their children especially the girl child. Run nutrition programs for children as malnutrition among small children and mothers are rampant in rural areas.
• This positive attitude among the ethnic people from villages can be an asset if utilized this belief with proper planning and programs to bring quick positive results toward solving the various social problems faced by the poor and underprivileged people in rural areas. Shambhala Charity plans to run various health, social, and economic programs directly benefitting such communities at Chaughare village. Once the program is started successfully this model can be replicated in other villages.

A very recent household survey from the Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal shows that most of the earnings of the average village family, which is meager in backward villages, in the rural parts of Nepal are spent on addictions twice than on education. The rural families in Nepal spend the major chunk of their hard-earned income on alcohol and tobacco, the main cause of their poverty, domestic violence, and educationally deprived children.

Health problem in Nepal: Lack of personal hygiene and timely medical treatment is causing loss of lives at an alarming rate in Nepal, especially among children and women in rural villages. The serious problems among the poor children are malnutrition, Diarrhea, high infant mortality in rural areas, and Acute Respiratory Infection.

And most of the rural women are facing micro nutritional deficiencies (such as vitamin deficiency, iodine deficiency, Anemia) serious Reproductive health problems, Uterus prolapsed, and other common health problems like tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart diseases, etc.

Heart and lung problems are quite common in rural villages due to a lack of awareness and proper food. Alcohol consumption and smoking are rampant all over Nepal causing this health crisis. Mass awareness programs are required for this challenging national problem.

About us

After long years of extensive travel in a rural part of Nepal and being deeply touched by the unimaginable condition of people spending their lives in extremely miserable conditions, we started supporting the following human beings out of the personal resources which were meager as compared to the large group of needy people. We all decided to work together by forming a formal organization to collect resources and provide humanitarian support to the needy people. Thus, the Shambhala Charity was established by:

Edwin Marzec:

Mukunda Bista: Active in Charity activities for the last three decades. Former Government of Nepal officer. Work experience in diplomatic service and also as country director in E.U. funded projects in Nepal. Also worked briefly for Deloitte, USA. Involved in various programs related to indentured daughters, child malnutrition, HIV aids, education to marginalized children, providing life-saving relief material to poor communities, assisting in saving the lives of poor children and women from remote areas, etc.

Health activities

Shambhala Charity volunteers and members had been conducting various emergency as well as life-saving activities long before the organization was established.

Under this program, Shambhala Charity is involved  in:

• Rescuing poor sick people from remote villages as well as those who arrived in big towns but are dying due to lack of money and approach to the right medical centers such as Govt. hospitals. Ensure their treatment by admitting them to hospitals and medical centers. Make follow up until they fully recover.
• Provide financial support for major surgeries such as heart, Kidney, and orthopedic. Support acute sick children and women suffering from diseases like Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
• Help establish or upgrade medical centers in remote areas ensuring medical treatment to poor and marginalized communities.
• Conduct free medical checkup camps in villages.
• Provide quick medical treatment to people when sudden outbreak of epidemics. Diarrhea, pneumonia and other diseases. Most of the time entire village is infected instantly in remote areas.

               Manjali Tamang at hospital

Manjali Tamang, the destitute child was born to one of the poorest parents at Chaughare, a remote village in Lalitpur district in the south of Kathmandu valley. An innocent child like other village children at her age, was a happy child, used to attend the local Government school at Chaughare and was totally unaware of her destiny that she was slowly moving towards serious illness, almost incurable disease. When she started feeling pain in her chest with other symptoms such as fever, respiratory problems and it was further compounded by swelling of her belly without any valid reason. She had to quit going to school and gradually became seriously ill. As prevalent in remote village like Chaughare, her parents spent their hard earned money to local Shamans hoping that they could cure her disease. Which as, obviously, a useless effort.

Manjali Tamang after diagnosis.

Her parents are so superstitious that it took us several efforts to convince them to take her to a hospital as the child needed serious heart surgery. Finally, we took her to a Government hospital and she was diagnosed with a serious heart infection.  Due to illiteracy her parents did not have faintest idea how serious their daughter was.  After going through the pervious documents and further examination, Doctors told us that there is very serious infection in her heart. The only option is heart surgery which is highly risky to her life.  Which meant Manjali’s survival chance was very bleak. We talked to her father on the phone through another person at Chaughare but even at this stage, it was almost impossible to convince her father to accept the surgery of his daughter. We finally managed to persuade him and after 7 hours of surgery and everyone praying for her life, she finally survived. We got her re-admitted to the village school and now Manjali could be seen running in the mountain in her home village like a deer.

Natural disaster

Due to the mountainous topography of Nepal and the extreme poverty of the rural population, Nepal is one of the highest risk countries in the world in the context of natural disasters and casualties due to this. Each year hundreds of people die due to natural and manmade disasters.

Under this program Shambhala Charity is involved in:

• Provide emergency relief materials immediately to the disaster victims to save lives. Major incidents happen in remote areas on both mountain and plain land. In mountain areas, the landslides are the most common ones frequently faced by the poor villagers. Providing warm clothes and tents or plastic sheets, food, etc. is being conducted to as many victims as possible through Shambhala Charity.
• Conduct rehabilitation programs for the disaster victim’s families, who lose all their property and livestock. Who are left without shelter.
• Provide warm clothes and woolen blankets to very poor and marginalized families especially the children in remote villages on plain land during winter. The villagers, especially the so-called low cast communities, are so poor that they do not have proper clothes to cover their bodies, and thus, many of them die on harsh winter days because of this.
• Run awareness programs, in association with related other social and Government organizations,  among the vulnerable communities in remote villages for preventive methods in case of natural disaster.

Community Services

Even at the advent of the 21^st Century, most of the villages in Nepal lack adequate knowledge and access to basic sanitation and personal hygiene, education to children specially the girl child, optimum use of their local natural resources, and improved farming. Apart from this, the rural society is facing serious social evils such as alcoholism, early child marriage and several other malpractices.

Under this program Shambhala Charity is involved in:

• Running mass awareness programs, in association with other social and Government organizations, on domestic violence against women and children.
• Awareness for sending girl child to school
• Maintaining cleanliness and protecting the eco-system of the village
• Gender balance
• Counseling against drug and alcohol abuse
• Empowering rural women
• Providing an opportunity for self-employment to the rural women
• Introducing improved farming
• Protecting the local cultural heritage
• Encouraging and providing training on cooperative savings and credit schemes
• Mass education on positive thinking, compassion, and sharing loving-kindness toward a better future generation