Our Story

Foundation Nepal’s CEO, Nicky Deasy, left the business world to help tackle chronic poverty in Nepal. Her business background underlies all our activities – translating into a razor-sharp focus on efficiency, value for money, and a commitment to the highest standards of professionalism and quality in everything we do.

Putting business skills to good use

Foundation Nepal was established in December 2006 by Nicky Deasy, and was then named ‘The Nepalese Children’s Foundation’. Nicky is a Chartered Accountant and was a Director with Ernst & Young in Galway, heading up their Corporate Finance practice for the West of Ireland. Previously, she had worked with KPMG Corporate Finance in Dublin for seven years. After 12 years of advising on mergers, acquisitions and corporate fundraising, she felt that although her career was very successful, she felt it was not her true vocation. She decided to take a year out, go to Nepal and do six months of volunteering work teaching English to children in orphanages and remote villages in Nepal, while she considered what next to do with her life.

CEO & Directory Nicky Deasy with a malnurished elderly woman in Humla

Fundraising in 2006

Nicky finished up with Ernst & Young at Christmas 2006, and decided to try to raise some small funds before she left for Nepal in January 2007. A charity was set up, mainly for tax reasons. However the funds raised far exceeded her expectations. In the region of €100,000 was raised in December 2006 and January 2007, mainly from her former clients.

2007 working as a volunteer in Nepal

On arriving in Nepal in January 2007, Nicky taught English to children in impoverished villages, and ran various small projects with the funds, such as an eye camp for 1,200 children. She part-financed and oversaw the construction of a children’s home. She also bought educational supplies, and fitted out and brought electricity to a teaching centre with the funds. But although a lot had been achieved, most of the money remained unspent.

Decision to set up a fully fledged charity and commit to a five-year work programme

Nicky’s original intention had been to distribute any remaining funds to local NGOs when she planned to finish up in Nepal, in June 2007. However, by then, she still had not met any NGOs who she felt would effectively use her funds to help the poor. Transparency International ranks Nepal as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. With such acute poverty and unemployment, many NGOs use donor funds to pay the management team large salaries, and employ family and friends. Therefore, Nicky made the decision in June 2007 to set up a fully fledged charity in Nepal, which she could control to ensure that the funds were spent efficiently. This would help maximise the help given to those most in need, as well as providing a long-term, sustainable solution to the problems people faced.

Orphanages, child exploitation and abuse in Nepal

Originally, Nicky had planned to teach English in orphanages, to help the many children living in these institutions. However, by June 2007, she had become increasingly concerned about the operation of orphanages in Nepal. Most of the children in these orphanages are not orphans, but come from the really remote and poor parts of the Himalayas such as Humla, where there is widespread malnutrition, and very poor healthcare and education facilities. People from Kathmandu go into these areas and convince parents to hand over their children, offering promises of three meals a day, a good-quality education, healthcare, and a much brighter future. Most children handed over by naive parents are often as young as five or six years old, and given the remoteness of the areas where they come from, most never see their families again.

Orphanages are highly unregulated in Nepal, and many are run for the benefit of those running them, rather than for the benefit of the children. Westerners are encouraged to visit the orphanages and are convinced to provide financial support to them. However, often the money is used by the people running the orphanages to fund a lavish lifestyle by Nepali standards, while the children are given very poor care. At best, the children’s physical needs are met, but they rarely receive any love and affection, and are raised in an institutional environment. In some orphanages, children are sent out to beg all day, while others are fed on leftovers from the markets – food unfit for animals. Western paedophiles have run some orphanages, with many children suffering serial sexual abuse for many years before it was detected. The problem is that these children are so young, and without any family nearby or people to protect them they are entirely at the mercy of those running the orphanage. In providing financial support to some orphanages, naive westerners can inadvertently support and encourage an industry of child exploitation.

Street children in Kathmandu

There are many street children in Kathmandu, many whom have run away from orphanages. These children are dressed in rags, sleep rough on the streets, and forage in bins for food. Many take drugs and sniff glue, and never go to school. Nicky became increasingly convinced that these children would have had a much better life if they had remained within the loving care of their families, and that orphanages were a principal cause of the children becoming homeless.

Decision to work in Humla and design of work programme

And so, she decided that it would be best to work in the most remote parts of the country to support these children’s parents, by improving food production and nutrition, family income, and basic social services such as primary healthcare and education.

The second half of 2007 was spent visiting the district of Humla, the second poorest of Nepal’s 75 districts, and trekking around to see conditions at first hand. A management team was then recruited in Nepal, and a five-year work programme designed and submitted to the government of Nepal for approval. The name of the work programme is CHEWI (Community Healthcare, Education, Women’s Empowerment and Income Generation). This programme embraces the Millennium Development Goals, and focuses on running health posts, supporting primary education, women’s literacy and vocational education for men, and developing income generation/sustainable livelihood opportunities for women and low caste people, to support their empowerment and to improve nutrition. Nicky returned to Ireland in early 2008. Formal approval for the CHEWI programme was issued by the Nepali government in January 2008, which allowed work to commence in earnest.

Holistic programmes kick off in 2008 and first year sees strong impact

A lot was achieved in 2008, the first year of the programme. Some of the key results by the end of 2008 included:

Supporting three health posts with seven healthcare workers
Treating over 13,000 patients
Running health education campaigns, immunisation and de-worming programmes
Providing family planning assistance to over 1,100 patients
Providing maternity services to just under 700 patients
Supplying educational materials to 1,087 children at eight primary schools
Starting to build new classrooms at Thehe primary school
Establishing two micro-finance groups in Thehe
Forming women’s co-ops for permaculture vegetable growing in Bergaun
Building a permaculture vegetable garden and poultry shed at a girl’s secondary school hostel in Simikot
Purchasing land for our volunteer and education centre in Simikot
More information on the CHEWI Programme >

Ireland 2008 sees charitable tax status achieved and Irish Aid funding secured

Nicky visited Nepal twice in 2008 to review progress, and in Ireland focused on fundraising to support the five-year programme. The charity was approved by the Revenue Commissioners with charitable tax status in April 2008, and Irish Aid funding was secured in November 2008. She devoted most of her time to the charity without taking any salary, and employed no staff in Ireland, to ensure that as little money as possible was spent on overheads, with almost all monies raised going directly to Nepal. She won a number of awards for her efforts.

2009 sees excellent results in Nepal

2009 has seen further progress. Results include:

Supporting a fourth health post in Kharpunath
Treating 9,759 patients in the first six months of the year
Completing construction of the extension to Thehe primary school
Laying the groundwork for building a much-needed extension to Maila primary school
Establishing three micro-finance groups in Kharpunath and two additional groups in Thehe
Expanding the women’s co-ops for permaculture vegetable growing in Bergaun
Starting women’s literacy programmes
Designing the new volunteer and education centre, and recruiting volunteers to help build it

2009 – Rebranding for growth and expansion of Irish team

Back in Ireland, Nicky continued as CEO, and was responsible for all areas of the charity in Ireland, from audit and accounts, fundraising and communications to donors, recruiting volunteers, marketing and all aspects of operations, as well as overseeing and approving the work programmes in Nepal. A decision was made to change the name of the organisation to Foundation Nepal, which better reflects the organisation’s work focus. This was accompanied with a redesigned website and marketing materials, and the new brand was launched in June 2009.

In the same month, Nicky gave birth to a baby boy. The main impact of this was the need to recruit a team to support her, as her role had become increasingly unmanageable for one person. Three new part-time team members were recruited.

Moving towards a blueprint for a permanent end to poverty – Millennium Villages

Our ambitions have moved towards designing a work programme that would provide an end to extreme poverty, a final solution, rather than long term programmes which drip feed in aid, sufficient to avoid a short-term crisis, but insufficient to allow people to get out of the poverty trap. After a lot of research, we have developed an adapted version of an integrated development model called the Millennium Villages approach, which was developed by the Earth Institute at Columbia Univeristy in New York, headed by Prof Jeffrey Sachs.

For more information about Foundation Nepal, contact us at +353 (0)91 446864 or info@foundation-nepal.org