On a two-month gap before graduation, I went to a small orphanage in Dang. I came back with a project, a building, and a complete restoration of my faith in people.
My whole life I've tried to support the future of children in difficult life situations. That's why, in high school, I founded the UNHCR Young Champions Club at the UN in Geneva, and during my studies I also worked with Eva Lustigová on the Lustig Foundation's educational programs for young high-school students about the importance of humanity.
I always had the feeling that I was helping from a distance — theoretically, through teaching, education, and raising money. And then I realized that this was exactly what bothered me about it: this theoretical help started to feel insufficient to me. I always felt I could do more.
So when I finished high school, I knew it was time to act. I had two months free before graduation, so I set off to Nepal to volunteer at an orphanage I had found through the father of a friend who works there. I flew to Kathmandu, then took an hour on a local plane, then a five-hour drive, and arrived in Ghorahi.
I spent six weeks living with Nepali orphans in their orphanage — playing, living, eating, and studying with children aged four to twenty. They taught me things that eighteen years in Europe never taught me: joy in scarcity, and resilience in silence. Living with them, I began to realize they were among the strongest people I had ever met. Although their past had been extraordinarily tragic, the way they used love and faith to handle their struggles truly astonished me. No masks — just love, hope, and faith.
While getting to know the children, I learned something new about life every day. I taught them, and they taught me.
Most of all, my faith in people was genuinely restored. The kind of passion and gratitude that is so missing in the West was rooted in their minds through faith. When I talked to the children, they were always positive, full of joy, and simply happy to be here. For me, it was still unbelievable to see someone who has so little, no parents, lives in an orphanage — when school ends and all their friends go home to their families, these children return to their bedrooms with what would seem to us like very few things to look forward to. That's how I perceived it. I was wrong. They were excited. They looked forward to running, playing, visiting temples, and learning from older students.
That was when I started to realize that beneath the surface of that joy was depth. When I dove a little deeper, I understood that their joy came from a loving environment and from a desire to help children in the same situation as them. When I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, the answers were: a police officer, to help children (police officers in Nepal are often the ones who protect children and bring them to this orphanage), or a child-protection lawyer, to defend the rights of children in Nepal. That showed me they needed to walk their own path — and it pushed me toward becoming an active link in that journey.
Even though those children have so little, they have far more than most people in the West.
"You'll come, you'll love us, and then you'll leave like everyone else," one of the girls, Kiran, said to me.
And then all the children said it to me again before I was about to leave. That was the breaking point for me. The moment when you know you HAVE TO ACT AND CHANGE SOMETHING. A simple human instinct that turned into a two-year construction project: a safe educational space, an infirmary, and a top floor used by students learning how to become yoga instructors.
After the time I spent there, I realized that most projects and nonprofits are built on theoretical and distant support. Reading a story and donating money, or reading a story and making a plan. With my project, I wanted something different. Everything seems generic to me. Everyone is just building something they think might be needed. After truly getting to know these incredible children, I knew it was on me to give them something that would really push their future forward — and that's where this personalized project was born. Truly understanding a project that would directly help build their successful future is, in my opinion, the best way to approach these things. So I decided to build their educational center.
I came back home and launched a crowdfunding initiative. After I successfully raised enough money, I made sure the money arrived at the right place, and we began the construction of the educational center, which we will officially open this March.
Every year I go back to the children at the orphanage, and we talk about what has changed, how the construction of the new center is progressing, and how it will change their lives.