History of the organisation

Nature and the people of the Himalayas - that is what attracted Heike Yamuna Kiefer to Nepal early on. She experienced the fascinating mountain world and the equally fascinating culture on trekking tours. She also encountered impoverished people and neglected street children. And she did not want to accept the hardship helplessly, but began to place her first child at a boarding school in 1995 and to pay for his upkeep. Friends who travelled with her in the following years also followed her example, and together they founded our small charitable association in 2002.

The aim was to enable children from remote regions of Nepal to attend school in Kathmandu through donations and sponsorships. This is because teachers in rural areas are typically not well trained, schools are poor and in the mountain regions they are only open in the summer months. The Buddha Academy Boarding School and the affiliated Buddha Memorial Children's Home in Kathmandu have taken in the children, and the name of the organisation “Buddha Memorial Welfare Trust e.V.” was chosen accordingly.

Over the years, the volume of donations grew and with it the number of children supported. In 2009, Heike's Nepalese friends founded the Ashraya association in Nepal to coordinate the cooperation with the Buddha Academy locally and to establish long-term, self-sufficient support in the country itself.

In 2014, our association became aware of the urgent need of the WIDE Children's Home with around 30 children in southern India and decided to help here too. In the course of the necessary change to the articles of association, our organisation was renamed “NAMASTE Welfare e.V.”.

Serki Sherpa, Heike Yamuna's first Nepalese godson, founded the “Yamuna Children's Home” on the outskirts of Kathmandu in 2015 and has been looking after the welfare of around 30 orphans, half-orphans and children from precarious families ever since. Alongside other organisations, our association bears part of the costs of the children's home through sponsorships.

Thanks to a large number of incredibly loyal sponsors and newly acquired sponsors, we are able to support over 70 children and young people as well as 3 elderly people in need in the three projects presented. Financial resources are always scarce and the price increases in recent years in India and Nepal, especially in the capital Kathmandu, are considerable. However, those responsible calculate with a sharp pencil and only make the necessary expenditures with great caution, and the children are used to being without possessions, undemanding and yet happy and content.