Though our organization is made up of a large mixture of staff, volunteers, workers and laborers the heart of the leadership is our Board Of Directors. With the passing of our old Director, Mrs. Maxine D. Shipway we were left with a position in our Board to fill. A general election was held today and Mr. Warwick (Rick) Shipway was voted in unanimously by all our staff as our new Director and Mrs. Priscilla Shipway as Treasurer of our Board.

Left to right: Eugene George, Priscilla Shipway, Clifton Shipway, Paula Karada, Simeon Karada, Josie Singh, Warwick (Rick) Shipway

We look forward to the many years ahead under the leadership of this team as they work heard to see the lives of so many children changed for the better.

Over the last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by the number of well wishers and visitors that we have had coming to try and help us after the recent flooding.

The postal service has also re-opened and some of our kids were wonderfully surprised by a lovely blanket that was sent by some students in Singapore along with some clothes to help keep them warm this winter.

We want to express our gratitude once again to everyone who has stood with us during this difficult time. We appreciate it very much.

Today marks one year since we started our blog, we would like to thank all who not only read and respond to our posts but also pass them on to friends, family and co-workers.

Late last week in the midst of all our chaos Isobel finally returned home to the mission from Delhi where she has spent the last 5 months recovering from major spinal surgery. We are happy to say that all has gone very well and she is now able to stand straight, run, climb and play like all the other kids. Though she might require some adjustments in the future to her spinal brace the majority of the hard work is now over. We want to thank everyone who has helped out, written to and supported her and us during this journey the results of all of this can be seen clearly in the x-rays below.

In another positive note we are happy to report that the twins and Cynthia are also doing great. Saloni and Shavani have both now got enough strength and control to sit up, look around and have even begun to learn to hold their own bottles. Saloni has been struggling with a cough over the last few days but we are confident that she will get through it just fine.

Heavy rains in the Himalayas brought the worst flooding we have ever had here on the mission yesterday. In a period of less than 30 minutes the waters rose up over 6ft and flooded much of our compound in more than 3ft of water! All our hostels, houses and buildings were flooded except two, some worse than others. Fortunately thanks to some quick thinking by staff and children damage was kept to a minimum as possessions, clothes and bedding were placed up high on furniture out of the waters reach. Some of our grain was damaged when the storerooms flooded but the damage will not be known until the weather clears up and we can empty out the grain bins.


Almost all of our staff houses were flooded, several under 3-5ft of water... many of the surrounding villages were worse off... some areas were 5-8ft in water. In our area the most common material for building houses is a mixture of straw and mud which meant that many people were left homeless as their houses simply washed away.


In general the people of our local community do not know how to swim and so even 4-5ft floods can be life threatening. Using ropes and life jackets our staff and some government officials were able to save all who were stranded. One of our mission boys, Bimal, a capable swimmer was washed away when he tried to help a young girl who was caught in the flood. Bimal managed to get to a telephone pole where he was able to hold on until one of our staff members could rescue him. About 10 others including some elderly were trapped and forced to hang on to a power pole until we could get ropes


As far as we know there were no casualties in our area though we did hear that a school nearby collapsed killing 18 students inside... also several others died in villages other than ours.

Flood waters have now gone down but locals now have a problem with everything being wet, cold and contaminated with flood water (which contained lots of pollution including septic waste). Dry wood for lighting fires not to mention dry ground is going to be difficult to find for at least 48hrs. Dead livestock scatter the ground around the village and the clean-up process will possibly take weeks.