According to Bonnie Auntie, “When we built our new home in 2011, we worked with a Kathmandu architect to make sure we had our own sewer processing, solar power, rainwater harvesting, bio-gas and organic gardens. These are integral to our infrastructure, but we wanted to move beyond that and help the children to understand the importance of regenerative living by doing projects that were also fun!â€
Here are just a few examples:
– The projects that the children enjoy most are our recycle and re-use projects. We make house stools out of egg cartons – we have a lot of those to recycle since we use 100+ eggs per week. Defunct canister vacuum cleaners make great waste bins, and we use one on wheels for outdoor clean-up every Saturday.
– Our large broken rice cookers make great colorful planters and their lids provide wall decoration. The children love to paint things and create – the girls’ favorites are the skirts that our staff makes from broken umbrellas!
– Every spring we clean out the children’s oldest and most raggedy clothes and send them to a cutter/chopper. When these come back as recycled fabric, we use that fabric to make new floor cushions and mattresses.
– When a local preschool closed, they donated their coat and shoe cubbies to Ama Ghar. We didn’t need them as cubbies, but turned on their sides they make great shoe racks and library shelves.
– We subsidize our local village’s trash pickup and give 1 Rupee per plastic bottle brought to Ama Ghar for recycling. We have a monthly pick-up from Doko Recyclers for our plastic bottles, general plastics, paper and anything we can’t use that can be recycled. The children actively sort the trash daily.
Our goal is that nothing goes to waste at Ama Ghar, and we do our best to re-use and recycle in creative ways to set an example for our future leaders to follow in their own lives.