Nepal Youth Foundation

I have been a supporter of the Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation (NYF) for years, and a trip to Nepal in October, 2009, intensified my enthusiasm for this extraordinary NGO. NYF was founded by Olga Murray in 1990, when she retired from her career as a legal researcher. Retired?? Olga, the most active 85 year old I know, made her fascination with Nepal into a new, lifelong commitment.

Let’s start with the Nepali children who are the focus of NYF's activities. NYF started out by setting up two children's homes in Kathmandu, one for boys and one for girls. Many of the children have been street kids, working as beggars and abandoned by their parents. The children live in a NYF community in which, together, they form their own caring family, finish high school, and many go on, with scholarships, to university and professional careers.

Olga took a special interest in malnutrition in existing poor families. She established Nutritional Rehabilitation Homes for malnourished children who are referred by hospitals AND for their mothers. These are small hospitals dedicated to restoring severely malnourished children to health and educating their mothers about nutrition and all aspects of child care. At the end of this year, there will be 12 such facilities around the country. After five weeks of the feeding program, most children gain enough weight to reach average for their age and the mothers gain an average of 12 pounds. Best of all, the mothers learn how to cook and grow healthier foods than rice and lentils so they can better feed their entire families when they return home.

NYF's program that moved me the most is Indentured Daughters in which NYF buys back daughters in the western Terai region who have been indentured at a young age to work as a servant for a wealthy family. NYF buys the girl’s family a piglet or goat to make up for lost income from indenturing the girl and then sends the girl to school in her home community. NYF has liberated 10,000 bonded girls and is on the verge of eradicating the bonding custom. The best part is that the girls have formed their own groups to publicize the illegality and cruelty of indenturing.

Always innovating, Olga has recently started a children's counseling center. As reported on NYOF's website, "Nepal is in its infancy as far as psychological counseling is concerned. However, many children suffer from emotional trauma as a result of the insurgency which raged through country for ten years and was only recently resolved. Furthermore, disabled children, orphans, and homeless youth suffer from oppression and discrimination, and they, too, are in need of counseling."

Please read in detail about NYF and consider ways you can contribute to this amazing work!

The Butterfly Project

I'm sure we've all thought about the power of one – how one person can make a huge difference in the world. For me, the work done by Carole Peccorini in East Africa symbolizes beyond measure the power of one.

Carole, a nurse, counselor and writer, traveled in 2005 to 14 orphanages in Uganda to bring children health-giving glyconutrients and vitamins. There, she met Evaline at an orphanage in the north, and was completely taken by this bright and shining girl of ten. Carole asked the orphanage director if Evaline could go to college. "Intellectually, yes," he said, "but it would be a question of money. Who would pay the $6000 for three years of college?" Carole knew it was doable and immediately committed from a place deep within to become a partner in funding higher education for Evaline if she wanted to go to college.

She created the Butterfly Project based on the 1200 Blue Morpho Butterflies, iridescent blue mylar butterflies, she had tucked in her suitcase for gifts. Before she left Uganda, she vowed to raise $60,000 to send ten orphan girls to college.

But Carole does not sit still. The Butterfly Project is now in Kenya and Tanzania with 9 promising young women currently in college. Five are studying to be teachers and four are training to be nurses. There is still an open promise to Evaline awaiting her graduation from high school. The program is administered by Village Volunteers through three local, African program directors who select the girls and administer the funds. Shana Greene, Director of Village Volunteers, notes, "We do not have staff in country and I never go there because they want to treat me as a hero. Village Volunteers does not believe in simply giving aid but in partnering with stakeholders.”

For Carole, the butterflies symbolize transformation and she uses them to attract donations. She shares her dream with anyone who will listen and has received donations from over 400 individuals. As Carole tells her contributors, "Girls are the change agents for their culture when they have the opportunity for higher education. Educated girls lower the birth rate and the incidence of HIV/AIDS. They change communities, villages, countries." The gift for contributing partners is knowing they have made a real difference that changes a young woman's life and ripples out to touch many, many more. It gives everyone wings. Butterflies are beautiful; butterflies glide through the air. And so do the girls whose lives take flight from the Butterfly Project. And all this is happening from the power of one.

Seeds of Learning

Sometimes, right from your own backyard, you can discover an amazing NGO that works overseas. Recently, I met Annie Bacon, Executive Director of Seeds of Learning, in Santa Rosa. The US office of Seeds of Learning (SOL) is just down the road in Sonoma.

SOL's work is in depressed communities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In the past 19 years, SOL has built 114 classrooms in 38 schools in Nicaragua and El Salvador. SOL's mission – a bit like Greg Mortenson's efforts in the Himalayas, made so well-known by his book Three Cups of Tea – is to promote quality learning in developing communities.

SOL was started in 1988 by two volunteers working for Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua.  Todd Evans and Patrick Rickon first made rustic school desks out of scrap lumber from Habitat’s saw mill.  Soon they went on to build one-room schools, created SOL, and in 1995 put up a Learning Resource Center in Dario, Nicaragua, with books, puzzles and eventually reference materials for high school students.  SOL also has a scholarship program to help students pay the costs of tuition, books, uniforms, and transportation to school.

All the education-building work is done Central American community members and US and foreign volunteers, often high school students.  Volunteers have become so attached to the Central American communities they work in that they have begun a sister school program, now involving 2000 students and 80 teachers.

What impressed me most about SOL is its community development model – Central Americans must participate alongside the foreign volunteers and learn practical and leadership skills.  As Annie Bacon put it, “Communities have to invite us and commit to work with us before we go.”

Best of all, SOL’s activities are only a short distance from the US.  It’s easy to go and volunteer and the SOL work is a phenomenal learning experience for high school students and US community members.  Please visit the SOL web site to learn more. 

Knysna Educational Trust (KET)

You probably never heard of Knysna, South Africa, and neither had I until I launched Women’s Giving Tree. It turns out that Knysna is a beautiful town along the Garden Route on South Africa’s southern coast.

A resident notes, “As in all South African towns, the affluent residential areas lie within view of all who pass through. More than half of the town’s population dwells in poor living conditions on the outskirts of town where the dwellings are substandard and services, up until the last few years, have been little more than basic.”

In 1993, the Knysna Educational Trust (KET) was established to help upgrade early childhood development centers (ECD) in the town’s disadvantaged communities. Unfortunately, as informal settlements around Knysna grew, no provision was made for additional educational centers. As a result, many unemployed and uneducated women opened their homes for child care but failed to provide much educational stimulation.

Mujeres en Cambio

When I was on vacation in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, I was pleased to discover Mujeres en Cambio, a 15 year old, all volunteer, grass roots organization committed to helping girls in the campo (countryside) finish school and, in a number of cases, attend college. Girls in the campo are more likely than city girls to drop out of middle or high school because of the expense. While public education is free through sixth grade, middle school and high school are costly for the indigent, especially the $40 per semester tuition that must be paid up front.

Families in the campo are desperately poor, often making only $5 per day. They lack the funds to pay for school fees, books, transportation, uniforms and shoes. Without scholarships, most girls have to leave school to work or help out at home. Visit the Mujeres en Cambio website.

WINGS in Guatemala

Having visited Guatemala twice and done a fair amount of research on the country, I am well aware that most low income Guatemalan women do not receive contraceptive services because they cannot afford them or because cultural barriers stand in the way. Guatemala has the highest fertility rate in Latin America. Because women have so many children, one-half of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

WINGS is an NGO that started in 1999 when a retired US Foreign Service Officer living in Guatemala was asked for help for seven women, each of whom had eight children, and who wanted tubal ligations. In ten years, WINGS has become an extensive program, working in all parts of Guatemala, that provides birth control, does cervical cancer screening, and offers peer education on reproductive health and family planning to adolescents. Visit the WINGS website.

RecyclArt - Costa Rica

On the Women’s Giving Tree site, we suggest different Ways to Give to NGOs in the developing world. Well, here’s another way to give that most women will appreciate:

You Can SHOP!

Specifically, you can buy RecyclArt Eco-Jewelry: hand-made in the socio-environmental project of a Costa Rican NGO that helps women artisans make a living, by transforming trash into designer accessories. The artisans at RecyclArt are women from rural communities who recoup materials such as pull-tabs from discarded beverage cans that they weave with colorful fabric remnants, and turn into unique necklaces, bracelets, earrings and belts. Visit the RecyclArt blog for more information.

Eye of the Child (EYC)

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking at 160 out of 182 on the UN’s Human Development Index. Where is Malawi? Formerly a British colony named Nyasaland, Malawi is a small landlocked country of 14 million in central sub-Saharan Africa (between Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique) that survives on subsistence agriculture. Eye of the Child is an exceptional program working to promote and protect child rights in Malawi. Read more about Eye of the Child in Grantee Profiles at The Firelight Foundation.

The World Needs Girls

Indian women from poor families lead extremely difficult lives – if they even survive. When I was in India five years ago, I was shocked at the rampant discrimination against women. I learned, for instance, that there are fewer women than there should be under normal circumstances due to abandonment of girls, inattention to female children, and even abortion of female fetuses.

Aarti, is a multi-faceted program in Kadapa, India (located in Andra Pradesh, between Chennai and Hyderabad) that takes a wide-ranging approach to female needs. Aarti was started by Sandhya Puchalapalli who named the organization after her niece who died in a car accident in 1992 in Massachusetts. Visit this NGO's website. Read More & Comment On The NGO Above

AHOPE For Children

The numbers of orphans in Ethiopia -- 960,000 -- is phenomenal, the second highest concentration in the world. Perhaps 10 percent are HIV positive, and each year an additional 30,000 chldren are born HIV positive. Only 2 percent receive treatment, and, without treatment, half of these children will die by the age of two. Visit the AHOPE For Children website.