A 25 year long journey from passion to impact-
2019 was an incredible year for SWAN Nepal. It was a year marked by a huge milestone of 25 years of serving those in need. Right from its inception in 1994, we had a clear vision of giving needy children get an access to education, empowering women to reach their potential and capacitating health care services at the local level through small scale projects in Baglung district of Nepal.
In the first ten years, SWAN was focused on sponsoring the children’s education, strengthening community health and introducing livelihood programs, particularly in Baglung district. During the first decade the idea was to learn and understand the right working modality to approach and address issues such as poverty, inequality and ignorance of basic health necessities among local rural communities. These years were spent in allowing our passion to create impact – big and small and in the process, we were able to witness the transformations that could be brought upon even by small scale projects. And in the due course of time, we were able to hear from the communities and the local government, the existing problems and ideas they had to overcome them and based on their recommendations we introduced suitable interventions, one step at a time.
Education and Child Development
Poverty was a major concern for the locals who wanted access to quality education, health and well-being and resilient livelihoods. This was when I and a friend of mine, both driven by our passion for people knew it was time to translate this passion into action. This was when the idea of sponsoring needy children, giving quality education to to the students in community schools through infrastructure support, promoting early education, providing education/playing materials kits, teachers support and training, dawned upon us, and we embraced it. Over the course of time, sponsorship program changed the lives of thousands of impoverished children. They finally had the opportunity to pursue their academics and excel a transformation that was truly gratifying.
Maternal and Child Health
In 2010, we intervened the specific five-year-long maternal and child health project in Baglung which today has brought upon a significant difference in the capacity of health workers and birthing centers. This was made possible through trainings and provision of essential equipment – that almost Zero home deliveries while reducing maternal and neonatal deaths and strengthening referral mechanisms. This project was highly recognized by the Government as well.
Livelihoods
In the initial years, our livelihoods projects were solely focused on encouraging women to get involved in income generation activities. However, today women are empowered with skills and trainings such as goat rearing, off-seasonal vegetable farming among others. They are being capacitated to move from managing household chores to take on more entrepreneurial roles in sectors including eco-tourism, hospitality, handicrafts among others which although not necessarily on a huge scale has certainly diversified their livelihood options.
Humanitarian aid
During the time of the massive earthquake in 2015, SWAN took an initiative of helping earthquake victims by supplying relief materials, rebuilding 5+ schools with 25 classrooms and 15+ health facilities reconstructed that benefited 50,000+ people.
After the earthquake, we have been able to expand our projects from Baglung to other new districts, including Sindhupalchowk, Gorkha, Nuwkot, Parbat and Humla. Thanks to the relentless support provided by our donors across the world who have played a stronger role in enabling us to become a stronger non-profit organization today.
As a part of this expansion, we took our project to Udayapur district in the eastern part of Nepal and replicated our education and child development and drinking water support project there and also introduced maternal and child health project in Humla in 2018. The maternal and child health care project in Humla has created a huge impact, upping the number of institutional deliveries to ten from zero in one year’s time. As a part of our mission, to improve the maternal health in remote regions of the country, we are now taking the project to lower Humla
Right from the very beginning, our aim has been to help people help themselves and we have been striving to achieve that through our thematic goals. At SWAN, we have a small yet powerful team, who have been serving our mission with Sustainability, Equality, Transparency at the core. Here the size of the impact has always overridden the size of the budget and this is what helps us press forward in our mission.
From giving quality education to children who deserve it the most to providing proper health care services for new mothers and newborns and eventually capacitating communities, SWAN believes in putting other’s needs before its own – a trait that continues to set us apart.
As we continue our 25 year legacy, we remain committed to our mission of achieving more milestones, creating more impact and adding to the number – for the sake of our people and the country as a whole!
With deepest gratitude,
Krishna Karki
Founder Chairperson, SWAN Nepal
Date: May 11, 2019