Daughter's death turns Japanese dad to philanthropy in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Dec 13: How much is a father´s love worth?

After funding construction of 40 school buildings that today benefit around 13,000 students in Nepal and initiating construction of another 14, all in memory of his only child, Ishimaru Yujirou has still not found an answer to this question. [break]

The 68-year-old former chief of Education and Child Welfare Department, Nishinomiya Municipality, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, lost his daughter Nobuko Ishimaru to a rare congenital liver disease in 2001.

“What I am doing for Nepalese children is a reflection of my love for my late daughter,” said the philanthropist tearfully on an unusually sunny December afternoon.

“Having lost the most precious person in my life, I understand the value of life and know that I must put every moment to good use,” he added revealing his plan to build a total of 100 schools in Nepal in Nobuko´s memory by 2016.

Turning personal tragedy into will for social work

Yujirou´s daughter was born in 1975 with Biliary Atresia, a condition in which there is a blockage of ducts that carry bile from liver to the gall bladder.

The condition requires surgery within three months of a baby´s birth to give the baby a fighting chance at survival. Yujirou´s daughter was saved by giving her a liver transplant from her mother. But even transplants do not guarantee normal life for patients born with the disease.

Apart from leaving him worried about his daughter´s health for the next 25 years (the worry ended only after her death), Nobuko´s disease made Yujirou a member of Biliary Atresia Child Help Society in Japan. He was president of the society in 1994 when he read in Japanese newspapers that a girl had arrived from Nepal seeking treatment for the same disease.

“The girl from Nepal was already eight-month-old, which meant there was no way she could be saved through surgery,” said Yujirou. “I was shocked that doctors in Nepal were not aware of this fact!”

The shock led to curiosity about Nepal, where he eventually landed in 1996. Visiting Nepali villages and seeing that many districts did not even have one functioning hospital led to even greater shock.

Yujirou decided to help. His initial plan was to make a contribution to the health sector. But he was no doctor. “Eventually, I decided that helping improve education would eventually translate into better health conditions too,” he said.

The first school to receive Yujirou´s help is the Dhaneshwar Primary School in Banepa, Kavrepalanchowk. Digging into his personal savings, Yujirou built a six-room school building there.

“I was amazed that a school building could be built in Nepal for just around Rs 400,000. Also, a crowd of around 500 people gathered during the building´s inauguration ceremony, which was attended by none other than the then Education Minister,” said Yujirou, relating events that encouraged him to do more for Nepalese children.

But it was his second project that cemented Yujirou´s lasting ties with Nepal.

Yujirou built the Janauddhar Primary School, also from personal savings, at Sarsiunkhola-6, Kavrepalanchowk. There was no school in the village, so villagers were extremely grateful. An unforgettable moment arrived in 2001 when, upon hearing about the death of Yujirou´s daughter, villagers of Sarsuinkhola-6 built a temple in her memory and invited Yujirou to the temple.

“The way poor villagers of Sarsiunkhola repaid me was unforgettable,” he said. “The incident made me a human being.”

Till date, Yujirou´s Asia Friendship Network has built 40 school buildings, some of them at schools that already existed and others where there was no school.

“From last year, we decided to rev up pace,” Yujirou said.

Last year, the Network built 10 schools, and this year, 14 are under construction. The schools are located in districts as diversely located as Rukum, Kaski, Parsa, Sarlahi, Mahottari, Kavrepalanchowk, Sindhupalchowk, Ramechhap, Okhaldhunga, Gorkha and Nawalparasi, among others.

Free food for students

One of the key realizations that dawned on Yujirou in the years he built schools in Nepal is that students in rural areas were under-nourished and grew listless after noon.

“They were not eating enough,” he said. Yujirou´s organization is currently addressing this problem by providing free mid-day snack to students in 19 of the schools he is involved in. The snack costs the organization Rs 10 per student per school day.

The free food has ensured that absenteeism among students in these schools is almost nil, he said.

“Another realization is that students are more attracted to schools built by foreigners. It has a psychological pull,” he added, grinning.

To ensure that local forests are not ravaged to collect firewood for cooking food at the schools, the organization has installed bio-gas plants at the schools.

A long way to go

Apart from aiming to build a total of 100 school buildings by 2016, the Network has set eyes on enabling differently-abled children learn livelihood skills. This plan took birth after the success of an experiment with a kid named Ananda who doesn´t have arms and has just one leg.

Yujirou first spotted Ananda begging around Hanumandhoka Durbar Square six years ago. Yujirou financed training for Ananda so that he could learn to use his only leg to make drawings. Today, Ananda, 16, does not beg. He can still be spotted around Hanumandhoka making drawings on papers while onlookers drop banknotes to appreciate his skills.

“He makes as much as Rs 500 a day now,” said Ganesh Lama, Yujirou´s point man in Nepal since the very beginning.

Another section of children in Nepal are also set to benefit from the Network. Today, 50 orphans are being offered free accommodation, food, care, and education at an orphanage the Network has built in Bhaktapur at the cost of over Rs 13 million.

“When my daughter was alive, I was too busy with my work. Now, I sometimes feel like taking her out, talking to her, but I can´t,” said Yujirou on a somber note. “I don´t have children. My sole aim is to make Nepalese children happy,” he added, pointing at a drawing in his personal picture book where he has drawn his daughter flying out of Japan and landing in the Himalayas.