Roads to Rehab Nepal was ‘born’ in December 2016.
SOME BACKGROUND 
INFORMATION Virginia, the founding Trustee of Roads to Rehab Nepal, has a long and enduring history in Nepal. She has visited the country 41 times in a varied capacity which included volunteering, trekking and accompanying trekking groups for the best trekking company in the whole of Nepal, Adventure Thamserku https://adventurethamserku.com
She volunteered annually for several years as a member of a surgical team with an organisation called Open Heart International. She helped establish and volunteered with a UK charity called Classrooms in the Clouds from 2010 to 2012. In 2012 however, whilst trekking in the Langtang valley, she was asked to do something to facilitate healthcare in the region as the closest hospital was a two day walk away. Being hopeless at saying ‘no’, she worked with a local non-profit organisation and set up an ACNC registered charity called Langtang Valley Health (Australia). Virginia also provided support to the Australian Himalayan Foundation when they decided to establish a pilot project in the Solu Khumbu region. They now operate several clinics based on the nurse initiated model of care she developed for Langtang.
Tragically, the medical clinic in Langtang which provided primary health and emergency medical care to 750 people in the region was tragically destroyed by an avalanche that fell on the village following the earthquake in 2015. Everyone in the village, included our Nepalease nurses was killed, except for seven people. In the aftermath of the earthquake Langtang Valley Health Australia raised $80,000 for the surviving Langtang community to help with relief and rebuilding. A difficult decision was made to close the organisation for a multitude of complex reasons.
Virginia had become aware of Samrat’s wonderful work after the Earthquake through Facebook. He had set up a Shelter staffed by volunteer nurses and a physiotherapist to provide nursing care and physiotherapy for people who had been discharged from hospital way too early to make way for more.
She was so impressed with what he was doing, she asked him if he would like some help. He willingly accepted, so she visited Nepal again to meet him, spent several months doing all the administrative work required to register another non-profit organisation in Australia, finally settled on a name and at the end of 2026 we will be celebrating a decade of working together!
Thanks to so many visits to Nepal, some very patient teachers and some study of the language, Virginia has also written a Nepalese language book (click here to purchase a copy) Practical Nepali – Learning Nepali the Easy Way – which is for sale on Amazon and is great for people who want to be able to speak passable Nepalese but don’t need to know how to read or write the script.