Julius Dreyer

When traveling the last two month, I lost track on updating my blog frequently and frankly speaking felt uncomfortable, too, about sharing my personal thoughts here. Starting this blog I haven’t really thought thoroughly about whether it is only going to become a business blog or place for sharing my personal life as well. Later on I realized that combining both is harder than imagined and simply didn’t publish any more posts. There is one post however I still feel like sharing here before focusing more on business again. It is about Som, a 26 year old philanthropist I enjoyed meeting in Nepal a few weeks ago:

Som was introduced to me by my friend Danielle who has met his ex-wife in Nepal before. I didn’t know much about him, just that he was born in a small village and wanted to build a school there, which I offered to finance. We first met at noon in my hotel lobby, but it wasn’t until dinner that I really got to know him. As many other kids in Nepal he came from a poor village that only had an elementary school. For further education he had to walk for stunning six hours a day into the next village. When finally arriving in school after walking three hours in the morning he was mostly too tired to concentrate in school and after walking three hours back home of course hasn’t had much time and motivation for his homework either. Although accommodation in the village was not expensive, the problem was that people from those remote villages are mostly self-supporting famers and simply don’t have any money at all.

Although being a bright boy, his grades became worse, his parents more and more disappointed and the teachers impatient with him. After only three months in that school and just being 10 years old, he decided to drop out of school and try his luck in the all-famous capital Kathmandu. Like ten thousands of other kids in Nepal he became child labor, doing the hard and dirty work for greedy bosses who treated them as if they were their slaves. Forced to work for 10 and more hours per day just to sleep next to the toilet at nights. He was doing hard labor in street building, cleaning hotel rooms as a house keeper, carried heavy loads of 50kg and more from one village to another, was chef in a restaurant and finally became tour guide for foreigners. With 18 he married an Australian women and went to study and work in Australia. Never able to forget about his own painful youth, he took three jobs in Australia to save money and send it back home. After working like an ox for several years he eventually managed to save enough money to build a hostel close to the high school he dropped out of as a kid and ever since provides free accommodation for poor village kids like he used to be one. In his opinion most of the kids in Nepal just end up on the street because they drop out of school in the first place. Being unable to afford accommodation close to the schools many hours away from their homes is one reason less in his home area now…

Listening to 26 year old Som was just incredible; there was so much passion and determination in his voice, his eyes filled with tears talking about sad experiences and started sparkling when talking about the young kids he had convinced coming back to school. He has fought against the injustice of his former bosses, saw people loosing their legs by military grenades when demonstrating against the former king or friends of his dying because they didn’t have enough money for decent medication.
I was wondering what a strong character he must have. Not only surviving such a troubled youth but becoming an upright person like this, devoting his life to fighting selflessly for other people’s well being. Simply amazing and very inspiring to me!