About New LIfe Nepal

Hi everyone, I am Vivian, an occupational therapy student who just graduated this summer. I am currently volunteering at New Life Nepal in Kathmandu, Nepal and I will be here for three more weeks. New Life Nepal is a non-profit organisation supporting underprivileged children with disability. They are supporting approximately 20 young people at the moment and they age from 6 to 16. Their conditions include autism, cerebral palsy, learning disability, down syndrome, blind and deaf.

This project is taking a rehabilitative approach and currently they have 7 members of staff, including one part-time physiotherapist. Among the 20 children, around half of them are receiving residential care, which means New Life Nepal is their only home.

. Please see links below for more information about New Life Nepal

-Click to view the website for New Life Nepal

- Click to get to their Facebook page

Occupational Therapy

'Occupational Therapy' provides practical support to empower people with disability. We believe participation in meaningful everyday activities (or occupations) gives people a sense of identity and self-worth, and is essential for people’s health, well-being and increases our quality of life. "Occupation" refers to the things that we do everyday, including day-to-day activities such as self-care, work or leisure. Based on this belief, we use various ways to promote participation. One of it is looking into adapting the environment so that it becomes more accessible and friendly for people with special needs.

Read more about occupational therapy: The Royal College of Occupational Therapists

Occupational therapy as a profession does not exist in Nepal, but previous occupational therapist volunteers - Kristina and Tehmina introduced occupational therapy to New Life Nepal in 2018 summer (click link to see their work). They created a sensory room, provided staff training, and bought toys and tools for fine motor skill exercises.

What I am doing at New Life Nepal?

This year, I decided to spend a month volunteering in New Life Nepal to follow up Kristina and Tehmina’s amazing work. After spending a week there, I have given the staff some refreshers training about the importance of strength-based approach and how fine motor skills is important to our everyday tasks. I will continue introducing more structured play sessions and visual time-table to facilitate participation of children.

What are the difficulties?

One of the biggest difficulties I have encountered is the environment inside the centre, which is far from being disabled-friendly. There are around 7 children with cerebral palsy and they struggle walking and mangaging the stair safely and independently. Without proper aids, they crawl on the ground and staff have to do a lot of manual handling. These children also experience difficulties doing other occupations such as eating and toileting because of their reduced hand functioning. Therefore, I am hoping to introduce some major adaptations and equipment to them in order to empower both the children and the staff.

What do I want to do?

I hope to install the following adaptations to create a disabled-friendly environment:

- Stair rail (the centre has 3 levels)

- Toilet grab rail and stool

- Walking aids (currently they have 3 walking frame but they are partially broken)

- *Durable working desks and chairs

*Tehmina and Kristina bought some tables last year but only 3 are left unbroken. Proper desk and chair are ESSENTIAL for table-top activities and to promote good postures

- Small tools such as adapted pen, ktichen tools etc.

I kindly ask for donations to install the above adaptations and to buy the necessary equipment. My aim is to make changes that will sustainably support the children and staff there so that they will benefit from them after I leave.

I am aiming to raise £1000. All the money raised will be used on the children at New Life Nepal. Any extra money will be donated to the centre.

Thank you very much for your time and donation!

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Update : December 2019

To elaborate on the updates, I am attaching some photos to better describe the works that I have carried out.

WHAT I HAVE DONE?

With these environmental adaptation (installing grab rails, putting in desk and chair), children can complete their ADLs (activities of daily living) less dependently i.e. toileting, showering, walking, feeding and getting dressed.

I have also delivered a couple of staff training sessions which covered the following topics - 1. introcution of occupational therapy 2. grip and pinch 3.fine motor activties 4. communication with autism children 5. postural control for cebebral palsy children.

I have left some educational materials for them. The use of visual timetable and communication cue card were also introduced.

- Two visits to other local NGOs were organised (1. BIA supporting adult with physicaly disability and Autism Care Nepal Society supporting children with autism) with an aim to build up a supportive network among these organisations and to exchange knowledge and experiences supporting people with disability.

- A series of e-books were kindly given by OT mom to better support staff in delivering therapy session with the children at NLN. These e-books includes fine and gross motor activities, bilateral coordination exercises , scissor and handwriting skill exercise etc.

WHAT IS NEXT?

I have left a lot of ideas to introduce more strucutre and organisation to support the developments and rehabilitations of the children. To follow up on these, I am exctied to take up the role as a consulting occupational therapist of NLN. I will have regular review with Razan, the manager of NLN and will be working with him online.

Like our Facebook page - Friends of New LIfe Nepal to keep yourself posted about the works done by volunteers from around the world at NLN :)

I am also going to submit an article to RCOT OT news magazine where you can read more about my experiences of cross-cultural occupational therapy practice and application. Will post an update here once it is ready :)