Kathmandu, March 2:

An old-age home in Rabi Bhavan has been serving the elderly women, who have no one to fend for themselves.

Dil Shova Shrestha has been running the Old Age Management Social Work Trust on her own. She brings ageing women, who are abandoned on the streets, here. She does not seek recommendations, donations and official documents from these women before providing them with shelter at the trust.

The sole owner and caretaker of the trust, Shrestha says women, who are left to fend for themselves, are more miserable than men.

The trust provides shelter and services to ageing, destitute and poverty-stricken women.

Sitting on her bed at the trust, septuagenarian Buddha Kumari Acharya is overjoyed to chat with other elderly women staying at the trust.

Acharya has been staying at the trust for seven months. “No worries for us anymore. We are given much respect and care here,” says Buddha Kumari, who is always decked up

in red. “I got married when I was seven. My husband ran away from home a year later.”

Though nobody knows about the whereabouts of her husband, she is always dressed in red because she believes he is still alive. “After living for 10 years with my in-laws, I went to my father’s place in Nuwakot,” she says, adding that the idea of getting married again never occurred to her.

Dhan Laxmi Sahi, a visually-impaired woman from Ason, says, “My siblings let me stay with them until my mother was alive. I assumed her responsibilities when mother was in deathbed. The siblings made fake promises to me and dumped me here after mother died.” Dhan Laxmi says she attended the Laboratory School in Kirtipur till class four and learnt to read and write in Braille script.

She does all household chores, passes her time knitting, sowing, and weaving plastic mats.

Sixty-eight-year-old Mithai, a native of Patan, cannot speak clearly. She was given refuge at the home after recommendation from locals of Kupondole. “After being driven away by her relatives, she sought refuge at the Hari Har Bhajan Mandal at Kupondole. She was brought here as an open area was not safe for her,” owner Shrestha says.

The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, United Nations Women’s Organisation and Newa Mukti Morcha has felicitated Shrestha for her 10-year contribution in promoting the cause of women.