Welcome to the first post on the new Naya Shristi blog! Please feel free to read and share!

I’m hoping through this blog that you would hear more from my heart, the work we do, and the impact we are working to create. I hope you will feel invited into something making a worthwhile impact.

Creating opportunities, making things new, opening doors have all become tag lines of sorts to describe the vision of Naya Shristi and the change we would like to see. Why?

Poverty is a lack of choices. A former supervisor of mine said this to me in a normal check in. This line struck me to my core. Poverty is about money and access to resources but ultimately it’s more than that. It’s about privilege and personal value also.

If you have been told your whole life that you are worth nothing, even with all the resources in the world, you will probably believe that you are worth nothing and therefore you will not strive to be more than you believe you can be. This is also poverty.

Creating opportunities, making things new, opening doors are ways to say that we want to restore people’s dignity and value. We want people to believe that they can do anything they want to do. We want to eliminate the desperation that drives people to traffic their daughters because they feel like they have no other options.

Education, job training, job access are all huge parts changing this lack of choices that is poverty. Would you please join us in helping fight poverty among the young and disadvantaged in Nepal?