In a tranquil location in a lane off the main road in Baluwatar is a house that’s full of children aged between three and fourteen. Twenty seven of them are boys while 26 are girls. Coming from all over the country, these orphaned and abandoned children are all fortunate to have found a home in Aishworya Children’s Home under the kind and capable guardianship of Ms. Nirmala Ghimire and her family.
In addition to some staff members who work on a voluntary basis, she has able aides in her son Pramod and daughter Pramila, as well as in her daughter-in-law Ms. Binita Ghimire, who herself had been running a home for the physically challenged before she got married to Mr. Pramodsome years ago. Managing a single household with four or five members including a couple of children is hard enough in today’s world, and here we are talking about the care and upbringing of 53 children! It is indeed a herculean task, but one that the Ghimire family seems perfectly capable of.
How Ms. Nirmala came to run such a home makes for an interesting story. It was in 2005 that she found two dirty, hungry, and homeless boys, Jeetu (10) and Arun (8), on the streets of Balaju. She discovered that they were also very sick, so she took them to a hospital. Later, the boys were placed in an orphanage, where she visited them often. Then, a month later, she found Jack (9) and Andy (3), two abandoned brothers, in Chamati, whom she took along to the same orphanage.
However, the orphanage owner suffered a heart attack a year later, and the children were placed in another orphanage, where their treatment was far from good, if not outright abusive. Seeing this, Ms. Nirmala left her job as a driving instructor and sold her landed property to establish her own home for such children, where not only are they looked after well, but their educational needs are also taken care of. It is a great source of satisfaction to her to see many of her children grow up into responsible citizens and stand on their own feet.