Loo Niva

Loo Niva means the dawn or the break of day.  It is a NGO (non governmental organization) working in the field of children’s holistic development. The story of Loo Niva dates back in mid nineties, when a group of students started a library for children with support from CWIN.  Their vision is a nation where children can enjoy their rights in a friendly environment. To reach this goal, they have numerous programs and grass root activities in order to raise awareness of children’s rights, to prevent exploitation and marginalization of underprivileged children, and to promote high quality education.   They work with the surrounding communities and schools. They also give education support and have sponsor children, who probably would drop out of school without Loo Niva’s help. And the library is still working!  Loo Niva has also Finnish partners: ETVO and Interpedia, and they also get funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I have now worked with Loo Niva for a week and what a week it has been! The office consists of nine full time employees and four part time employees and a huge group of local volunteers.  All of the staff is motivated and all of them have been eager to make me feel welcome. I was also happy to learn how many sociology students I have around me!  The week has been busy with getting used to a new environment and orientating to the new job, I also had few field trips and we celebrated the National Children’s Day with a big event, wherein Loo Niva published a DVD with children’s songs. 

On my second day at work I was asked if I would like to take part on a field trip to nearby schools, in order to take invitations for a celebration and publication of children’s music DVD and to take reports to be filled about the sponsor children.  So in a few minutes I was sitting on a motorcycle and we were leaving the noise and pollution of the city behind and driving towards breathtaking views of the countryside and mountains. I like travelling by motorcycle; you can enjoy the scenery, the ventilation works and many of the places would be impossible to get to with a car. You also get to witness the goats beside the roads and women carrying their heavy loads in huge baskets on their backs. It is also usual to see a lot of dogs lying around. I saw one puppy so thin and sick that it probably had only few days to live and still it was wagging its tail. Of course this is normal life in places with a lot of stray dogs, but for an animal lover these aren’t very pleasant sights.

During the field trip it came obvious that Loo Niva is a respected partner with the schools.  The schools are eager to co-operate and want to change the attitudes towards child friendly atmosphere. For example in one of the school’s, there was someone visiting at the same time from another NGO, and the vice principal told her about Loo Niva with praise. Children are also excited to see visitors and got wild when I took out my camera. Unfortunately we were in a bit of a hurry to get to visit all the areas schools within a day, so we didn’t have time to see the sponsored children. We met with the principals, vice principals and head teachers who told us about their ongoing programs with Loo Niva and the sponsor children. In one of the schools, we were asked to meet with two of the sponsor children because they were failing some of their classes. The honesty of the children amazed me. One of the girls had just moved to the area so the new school might feel a bit unfamiliar still, but she also helped her parents to earn money by making carpets with them, which keeps her away from school from time to time. The other child told that she can’t always come to school or do her assignments because of family violence, caused by her fathers unemployment and alcohol problem. Loo Niva had already counseled the family, but sadly the ways to help children in her situation are limited, especially if they don’t have other family members to live with. Luckily there are some clubs after school where she can stay and have her own space to study.

Another day I took part in a field day in a near by village, where the theme of the day was the importance of children's education for the village’s women. Even though the communication was in Nepalese I enjoyed the day thoroughly. The day consisted of information and conversation and some games for the women. Even though I had many people around me kind enough to translate, I was sad not to understand everything that the women were saying, because I’m sure I could have learned a lot from them. 

Lets see what kind of challenges Loo Niva has in store for me for the months to come! If you want to learn more about Loo Niva Child Concern Group, you can visit their own web site, or the sites of ETVO and Interpedia.