The House of Hope

In 1999 Tori Lewis spent a gap year teaching in Nepal where she met Gopal and Eli Mukhia. The Mukhia family had started taking street children and or

phans into their home in 1993 to save them from living on the streets of Kathmandu. Gopal and Eli were both school teachers in a local high school and had a young family of their own. The Maoist revolt, which started in 1995 and lasted for more than a decade, killed thousands and left many children orphans or destitute with only one surviving parent and often reduced to squalid living conditions. By the time Tori met Gopal and Eli they had 22 children living with them in the limited space of their home and were struggling financially.  Tori returned to the UK determined to help the orphanage deal with the ever-increasing demands on its resources.

Tori soon had her whole family involved and once they had managed to register the charity with the UK Charity Commission in 2000, her mother, Jill, became the chairman and they set about fundraising to build a new orphanage. Tori went on to study at university in London and continued to raise funds for the project, while Jill and the rest of the family put on fundraising events in Devon.

By 2002 they had raised enough money to purchase a plot of land on the outskirts of Kathmandu which was large enough to grow produce and keep livestock, enabling the project to reach a stage of self-sufficiency. The whole Lewis family continued their fundraising efforts from 2002-2005 and went out to visit the site in Nepal, working with the orphanage family to develop efficient planting programmes and involve the children in the design of their new home. In 2005 the building project got underway and in 2007 the orphans moved into their new family home - the House of Hope.

Jill continues to raise funds through very successful events such as the summer concert last year with pianist Viktor Bijelovic, as well as her book club - Reading for Hope. However the current fundraising is now mostly concentrated on ensuring that the children will be able to support themselves as they grow up and eventually leave the House of Hope to start a new life.

The charity has always placed great importance on education and has ensured that girls in its care also attend local schools, even though the local culture sees education for girls as unnecessary, as many are often encouraged to marry at fourteen.  Any further education has to be funded privately but recent investment is already seeing excellent results; one girl has trained to become a nurse and is about to start work in a Nepalese hospital, another girl has completed her Montessori training and is teaching in a school in Kathmandu, two others are working in hotel catering and sharing a flat together. Not all of the young people are suited to further education so the charity also funds business start-up costs and has helped a boy to set up his own fruit stall - he is now married and has his own child.