PK and I spent most of November 2014 in Nepal with longtime friend Catherine Wood and a half dozen other US citizens, all committed to providing a rigorous well balanced education to impoverished Nepalese kids. Starting a decade ago with children in the early grades, each sponsor pledged to stick with one student until he or she graduated from high school.
I'd also been to Nepal with Catherine in 2002, soon after she started the student sponsorships by sponsoring a spunky little kid named Samip.
A highlight in 2002 was spending a morning with Samip and his parents in their humble home, eating a delicious meal prepared with love for a woman who had changed their world.
Same thing in 2014, but even better because Samip was all grown up and graduated and love and gratitude were thick and sweet in the air. And the food prepared for our visit, in Catherine's honor, was the best we had in Nepal.
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Samip, now in his twenties, reads aloud a heartfelt message from his proud father, Raju, left, written to Catherine, who made Samip's education and ongoing success possible. Not a dry eye in the house! Raju's message is below. Jeff Bossler, photo.
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Samip, age 8, on the day
he met Catherine Wood.
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When Catherine Wood looked into young Samip's bright eyes 15 years ago, she saw his future. As a child of loving but poor parents, he was condemned to receive only the most basic public education. After grade six, because his parents lacked funds for school uniforms and supplies, he'd be working the streets and markets to help his family score the basic rice and lentils.
But one fateful day in 2000, the then-small boy was on a bus trip, which had been organized by a non profit organization. He had the great good fortune to sit next to Catherine, who was in Nepal fulfilling a Rotary initiative to re-establish a village health clinic.
Samip captured Catherine's heart. It killed her to realize that within a few years, Samip's education would trail into oblivion. Like hundreds, thousands, millions of poor children in the third world, he would subsist on a few dollars a day, his dreams would die, and those bright eyes would dull.
Free universal quality education is not happening in much of the third world. In myriad countries populated by millions of children, quality education is available ONLY to children whose families can pay. Aside from an outlier here or there whose brilliance and hard work—and at least one piece of providential luck— elevate them, education is the key to escaping the hand-to-mouth routine.
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Samip's parents devote a wall in their tiny home to honor their
only child's academic achievements. This shrine (partially pictured)
dominates their combined bedroom/living room.
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Samip is a blessed man. He's bright. motivated, and much loved. But he also enjoyed once-in-a-lifetime good fortune when he caught Catherine's eye.
Raju's letter to Catherine. Didi is a term of endearment, meaning roughly, "sister".
Didi, I feel so happy, welcoming all BFF’s members to my small house. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for always standing next to my family and especially Samip.
It was 2000 when Catherine didi first visited Nepal, and didi visited our house too. She saw everything and felt our pain. After a month I got an email from her and didi decided to give scholarship to Samip. Didi, you became father and mother to Samip. You actually cared and loved him like your own son. We just gave him birth; you are the one who raised him up. My salary was not enough even to run my family. It was like a dream for me, seeing Samip going to good school and achieving good education. It was very hard for me to pay Samip’s tuition fee. Sometimes I borrowed it from my friend. My life was going through darkness until you came like a god. You took all our darkness and spread happiness into us.
Samip continued his education in the Phillipines and graduated with a BS in aeronautical engineering. Catherine and her husband, Michael, attended the ceremony and also paid expenses for Samip's proud parents to attend.
Didi, we never rode an airplane. Me and Anita were out of this world when you said, "Raju and Anita, you’ll attend Samip’s graduation ceremony." Didi, I don’t have any word to express my happiness. I think god for sending an angel who took care of everything. Thank you so much didi and Michael for always being there for us and Samip.
Samip, now employed by a Nepalese airline, donated his first paycheck, all of it, to the Bright Futures Foundation.
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Samip shares a photo book Catherine created to chronicle his educational odyssey. He's surrounded by student sponsors from the USA and, on the right, Keshav Thapa, the Nepalese who manages the sponsored students. A number of sponsors have pooled resources to make sure Keshav's six-year-old son also receives a quality education. Others pictured, left to right, Kathy Kraus, Charla Rolph and Jeff Bossler.
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There's more. As a result of encountering Samip, Catherine founded the Bright Futures Foundation (BFF) to sponsor poor Nepalese kids at the
Galaxy school in Kathmandu. The foundation also supported, with Rotary International for a time, a health clinic in Bhotechaur, a mountain village not far from Kathmandu.
Her 2014 Nepal visit was bittersweet, marking the end of a 10-year run with the clinic, which was always planned to become self-sustaining. The remaining 10 BFF scholarship students will continue to be supported by their individual sponsors until the last one graduates in 2021.
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| Keshav Thapa, BFF's man-on-the-ground in Kathmandu, has the full attention of Mark Minnis, Kathy Kraus, and Jeff Bossler, who sponsor, or have sponsored, BFF students at the Galaxy School. |
The bottom line is that 22 bright young people have been given the opportunity, though a rigorous education, to move beyond poverty. They have options. They have futures to create rather than sliding into a vast underclass.
In return, each sponsored student has pledged to:
- study hard and earn good grades
- never abuse a woman or child
- help support a girl's education.
As everywhere in the third world, and even in so-called advanced countries, girls are often denied education in favor of boys, or shut out just because they're girls.
Eight of the ten BFF sponsored students still in school are girls.
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More than a decade later, Catherine is still engaged in Samip's
future, which may include earning a master's degree in the USA. |
The takeaway of our magical morning with Samip and his parents:
It took one person to take the plunge to support a child's education. Whether Catherine envisioned it or not, that led to her forming a non profit organization that eventually financed an excellent education for 22 youngsters, many plucked from remote villages, some of which had sold girls into human trafficking.
Just 22? Yes. Just 22 young people whose lives have been taken off the poverty track and elevated to where they can choose from options where few, if any, existed before.
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Catherine at the Bhotechaur clinic with one of her many admirers.
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The Bhotechaur Health Clinic, initially a Rotary project, also benefitted, as Catherine and the BFF board felt an obligation and a desire to see the clinic continue to develop beyond the Rotary commitment. The rural clinic now serves an area that is home to about 50,000.
But the longtime big winners are the sponsored students and their families. And thanks to the pay-it-forward clause in student sponsorship, other disadvantaged young people are also bound for glory. All because 15 years ago, Catherine visited Nepal and left part of her heart in Kathmandu.
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A BFF sponsored student comes forward to accept an academic award at the Galaxy School.
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| Several mothers of sponsored students traveled from distant villages to attend a meeting with Catherine and BFF members to see their children receive academic awards. None of them speak English, so one of their daughters translated the ceremonies. That girl's delighted mother is on the left. One of the mothers here learned that her son is not up to snuff, and unless his performance improves, his sponsorship will end. The mother cried later, knowing that her 13-year-old boy may end up on the streets like his older brother. |
What does it take to sponsor a child's education in the third world?
- A big generous heart
- Understanding that educating young people is critical to improving developing countries and, hence, the world.
- Believing that one person, or a group pooling their funds, can lift a child out of poverty and hopelessness. This child could be the next Ghandi or Nelson Mandela or Malala. Or Samip.
- Sponsoring also requires connecting with a reputable non profit organization (NGO) that provides a conduit between the sponsored child and the sponsor, as BFF will continue to do until the last of the foundation's sponsored kids graduates in 2021.
I know there must be hundreds of worthy NGOs managing educational sponsorships, but the only two I know personally are the BFF and another whose founder I have come to know, admire and respect over the past couple of years. That would be
Frances Dixon founder and executive director of
Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala
What about the financial commitment?
BFF sponsors committed to $2,000 annually, some for as many as 10 years. When tuition increased by $500 at the Galaxy school, the foundation made up the difference with fundraising.
Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala has sponsorships starting at as little as $250 a year for primary and elementary students still in public school, and up to $2,500 annually for students in the two-year Maya Jaguar high school in the northern highlands of Guatemala. (
This compared with an annual average $12,000 per pupil cost of public education or more in the USA.)
PK and I were the only members of our small traveling group in Nepal who were not student sponsors. Meeting the kids and some parents, seeing the benefits, experiencing the students' gratitude and the pure joy of their accomplishments, converted us. We're now sponsoring a young Mayan through Adopt a Village in Guatemala.
I'll be writing more about this as PK and I are planning to drive to Guatemala late this year to visit the remote Maya Jaguar High School and the Adopt a Village "headquarters" in a remote mountainous region accessible by 4X drive only.
We have a Toyota truck and a Four Wheel camper. We're going. I can't wait.
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If you want to know more about sponsoring, please
contact Frances at Adopt a Village in Guatemala.
