Our story

Established in 1952, INF is Nepal’s longest-serving international non-government organisation.

INF history

INF is an interdenominational and international Christian mission that exists to bring life in all its fullness to Nepal. The vision for this work began in India in the 1930s, before Nepal was open to outside people or influences. Lily O’Hanlon and Hilda Steel began medical work among Nepali people living in the Indian town of Nautanwa on the border of Nepal. Here they faithfully waited and prayed that one day they would be able to work in Nepal, which at the time was completely closed to foreigners.

When Nepal opened up in 1952, after 16 years of prayer and waiting, a small group of medical missionaries including Lily and Hilda together with some Nepali friends walked north from the Indian border to the Pokhara valley, and with the permission of the Nepali Government set up a clinic and a few years later the ‘Shining Hospital’ – the first hospital in the west of Nepal and the beginning of INF as we know it today.

Since its humble beginnings INF has grown to be an organisation recognised for its innovative and successful approaches to community health and development work. Since the establishment of the ‘Shining Hospital’ in 1954 INF has gone on to establish a further hospitals and clinics across the West and Mid-Western Regions of Nepal. Always pushing into new frontiers it opened its most remote office in the district of Bajura, in the Far-West of Nepal, in 2013. Read here for more about INF’s work.

The complete history of INF, a story of ordinary people being used by God to do the seemingly impossible, can be read in ‘Light Dawns in Nepal’. Email communications@inf.org for a copy.