We started YYY Foundation in response to the earthquakes in 2015. In our first 5 years, we raised more than £100,000 and supported the rebuilding of 6 schools in Nepal. We worked mainly in Sindapulchowk, an area that was badly affected by the earthquakes. We also supported communities in other ways. We built a community centre, arranged teacher training classes, and continued to give emergency aid in times of natural disaster. On our various trips to check projects, we noticed that villages had few or no men of working age living there, they had gone abroad on promises of better pay. Even worse, we went to a school in a village next to one we were working in and found that 25 children had gone missing, someone had gone to the village with promises of a better life for them, and parents had, naively, sent the children away. The statistics of 35,000 children and young adults trafficked, 20,000 of those girls sent to work as slaves in the sex industry in India, these became real people.

Post covid, and rebuilding was finished, with the missing children still playing on our minds, we looked into how we could make a realistic difference. Very quickly, we realised that sensitive education and working alongside communities was the key. We devised a program to give schools access to computers and the internet, whilst at the same time helping girls to remain in school. We found experts in each field and partnered with them to formulate a program of help that is as dependent on local participation as it is on us to provide the equipment, training and support for them to build on. For these communities, the provision of IT education and resources to help girls manage their menstruation can be life-changing for young people and fundamental to the communities’ long-term prospects and sustainability.

YYY Foundation is run by 4 Trustees. Alongside founders Sera and Sarah Gurung are media expert Helen Keen and journalist Nancy Connolly. The Trustees have concentrated all the charity’s fundraising activities in the UK to date. The Foundation has very little administrative or other costs, and almost all funds raised are used for charitable activities.