One of our members, Pam Robotham, died some years ago, just short of her 90th birthday. She was a founder member of our club and was a solicitor and judge who devoted most of her life to helping women and girls, specialising in family law and being actively involved in the Girl Guides. Right up to her death she was an active member of our club. Pam left a generous legacy to our club which we felt should be used for something appropriate to Pam’s ideals.
One of our Friendship Links is SI Kathmandu in Nepal, and through our connections with that club we learned of a girl, Asmita, who was about to embark upon a law degree in university. We felt that to sponsor her through university would be the perfect use of Pam’s legacy, reflecting her passion for helping girls, and her legal background.
Asmita has now started her fourth year, but of course thanks to covid much has changed since she started her course. She sends us regular updates regarding her progress, noting that her second semester exams were disrupted due to covid, and the third semester lessons will for the time being be conducted online. She is an amazing girl – not only is she a hard-working student, but she is also a keen activist on behalf of human rights, recently campaigning for youth against rape, and against gender violence. Photos on Facebook of her protesting with fellow students show her passion. So, on reflection she is a perfect candidate for our support.
This is a country that has been hit hard by the pandemic. Extreme poverty was already a problem, and Nepal depends to a great extent on tourism. Over a million foreign tourists visited the country in 2019, and on the 1stof January this year the “Visit Nepal 2020” campaign was launched. This was expected to attract 2 million visitors and create thousands of new jobs, but of course was not to be. The country was locked down in March, resulting in massive cancellations of hotel and tourist bookings and widespread unemployment. And all this coming only five years after a devastating earthquake.
Against this background we feel very privileged to be able to help this extraordinary young girl who is determined to succeed in an environment fraught with challenges.
(Asmita is on the right with her sister.)