I came across a great book about a month ago called Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal. It’s a memoir, whose title pretty much sums up the entire storyline, which recounts how Connor Grennan, an admittedly reluctant volunteer, suddenly finds himself putting aside his own self interests for the sake of a group of orphans. What develops is a fast paced story that inspires as it recounts how Connor, upon realizing the children he’s helping may not actually be orphans but victims of child trafficking, becomes determined to reunite them with their parents.

It is a wonderfully adventurous story, light for its given subject matter, helped largely by Connor’s comedic writing style. As a result, I spent an entire weekend unable to put the book down was left with an unyielding optimism for the work Grennan is still doing in Nepal.

Personally, I have never taken an interest in Nepal. It’s not my “go to” destination when it comes to writing out that list of places I want to travel through. However, upon reading Grennan’s memoir I couldn’t help but google a little and learned that there are more than 15-30 thousand children disconnected from family as a result of Nepal’s civil war that ended five years ago. A large part of the difficulty lies in that fact that Nepal is a developing region, full of bureaucratic and political difficulties as well as the simple fact that a large part of the population outside of Kathmandu is separated by vast geographical barriers. It again makes one realized how harrowing Connors story actually is.

I encourage you, if you don’t pick up the book, at least check out Next Generation Nepal, the foundation Grennan started as a result of his volunteer work with the children of Little Princes Orphanage. And who knows, perhaps it could inspire you to be a little less reluctant...