Sponsor a child

Most charities offering sponsorship ask for £10 to £30 per month. We only ask for £30 per year.

We can do so because we don’t pay admin fees and work at the grassroots level. Our staff and volunteers are previously sponsored children. We are very efficient and because of the way we work locally, effective too.

Your donation of £30 goes toward a number of different things that you can see in the following chart.

We can do a lot because we buy from the local community and pay local prices. We make sure that your money is looked after and goes a long way to help each child.

We aim to be flexible in how we help each child and community so that we don’t prescribe what they need – we listen to them.

We pride ourselves on making sure 100% of your donation goes to the children, and is not spent on administration. As such, we make maximum use of our website to give you information about your sponsorship.

As a sponsor, you will have a login account where you will get photos and information about your sponsored children.

We don’t post you hardcopies because doing so is incredibly expensive and adds huge administration fees. But we make sure that for example, you can download photos that are big enough to be printed – just in case you need them!

We use PayPal online

• Because it is the most trusted online bank
• Because it is easy for you to set up an account
• Because your financial information is kept secure – we never see them
• Because it’s accepted worldwide and is used in 190 countries.

What makes Himalayan Learning so special?

• We work at the grassroots level – we employee people that we helped in the past
• We work with local communities – not for them
• We use your money like we would want ours used – we don’t have expensive offices and 4×4 cars
• We’ve been working in the same area for a decade – so we know what needs to be done, we just need the support to do it.

And communication?

Unlike the big charities, you can talk to us, not to a call-centre or a publicist.

Why is Himalayan Learning sponsorship so cheap?

We are a grassroots organisation that sources all our supplies and volunteers locally. 100% of your donation goes on the project, not on admin, and your donation covers exactly what we have said, rather than being spent on separate programmes. By working locally, we pay local prices in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Can we buy gifts for sponsored children?

We had this option previously, but had some problems with it. If you would like us to re-instate it, please let us know. You can always send them something simple in the post.

Will I get any kind of report?

When you sponsor you will get an account to login to. Once we have allocated children to you, you can see photos of them, of their school, and some details about them. We update these every year.

Can I send letters and gifts to the child I sponsor?

You are welcome to send letters to the child you are sponsoring, but please do not send them gifts of value. The postal system is terrible, most items never arrive and there is no address system like in most countries. The best things to send are simple items like stickers. Children in Nepal love stickers.

Can I choose a child?

Not now. Adding choice would mean huge administrative burden for us, and would put the costs up significantly.

Can I decide on the gender and age of my child?

Normally, we don’t take requests because it means we have added administration and this costs time and money. All our children are in terrible situations. However, if you really need to, just get in contact after you’ve sponsored and we’ll see what we can do.

How does your system work?

You provide a donation. We store the money in the Charities Aid Foundation bank in the UK. Every few months, we create a new budget for the upcoming period, and then transfer the money to our account in Nepal.

How long will the sponsorship last?

As long as you want. Of course, we can’t guarantee that the child you support will remain with Himalayan Learning, but we work hard to make sure they do. We work with them, their family, their school, and their community.

What happens if I cannot continue as a sponsor?

If your circumstances change and you can no longer sponsor a child, we will understand. We will, however, need to find another sponsor for the child as soon as we can. So the only thing that we ask is that you please let us know if you decide to end your support.

Will I always support the same child?

We hope that you will support a child throughout their school career. Once that child leaves, we move your sponsorship to a new child.

Can I get involved and let my friends and family know about you?

Yes, yes and more yes! This is how we work, by word of mouth from YOU. If you have friends, tell them, if you have a website, put a link to us on it, anything you think!

What about international donors?

We are not country-specific. We have donors in Australasia, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. If you are international, that’s no problem. We use Paypal which allows donors to donate worldwide, and most of our interactions are over the internet. We are also working on some alternative language pages, if you can help, let us know!

What’s this I hear about an award-winning documentary?

That’s right, we organised, shot, edited and printed an award-winning DVD about life and our project in the Himalaya. We may even let you have a copy!

Is there any small print?

Whilst we endeavour to do all that we can, some things can only be changed on a national or international scale. It is a fact of poverty that many children can die very quickly, in fact statistically 1 in 20 children in Nepal will die from diarrhea over 24-48 hours. There is also a massive problem with migration, children have to follow their parents in the search for food and money. Both of these problems cannot be solved locally. In the case of death of children, most of the time it will be because we cannot get them to a hospital in time which in many cases are many days walk away. We can only stress that we cannot change this, only governments can.