110602 HuffPost Greatest Person Of The Day: Maggie Doyne Builds Orphanage And School For Kids In Nepal

[SM Foundation Nepal]

HuffPost Greatest Person Of The Day: Maggie Doyne Builds Orphanage And
School For Kids In Nepal

First Posted: 06/ 1/11 04:43 PM ET Updated: 06/ 2/11 12:45 AM ET


After finishing high school in Mendham, N.J., Maggie Doyne wasn't sure
what she wanted to do. She'd been an ambitious and driven student --
the editor of her school yearbook, a varsity athlete, and the class
treasurer -- but as she weighed her options for college, she felt
increasingly burnt out, and decided that she should take some time
off.

"I took what's called a gap year," Maggie said, speaking to The
Huffington Post from her family's home in Mendham. "I was about to
make this investment in my life, but I didn't have a strong direction.
I wanted to figure that out."

For the first semester of her gap year, Maggie traveled with a
backpacking expedition program called LeapNow, which leads students on
service missions and cultural projects across the globe for a
semester. And when it came time to decide on her Spring plans, Maggie
asked a mentor how she could best "have an impact."

"I said I wanted to be of use and I wanted to work with kids," Maggie
recalls. "So I headed off to India to work for an organization
there."


In Northeast India, she met countless young Nepalese refugees who had
fled the country after the recent Maoist uprising and civil war. One
teenage girl she met had escaped Nepal six or seven years earlier, and
hadn't seen her family since. So she and Maggie decided to take a trip
together - back to Nepal, to look for the girl's family.

"We sat on a bus for two and a half days," Maggie said. "At the end of
the trip, we just came to a stop on the road, and the bus driver was
like, 'Alright girls, you can't go any further.'"

The two teenagers then trekked for two more days through the
Himalayas, ultimately finding the girl's former village. They received
details about her dissipated family and where many of her relatives
had ended up.

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"The effects on the whole area were very, very raw," Maggie said,
remembering the experience. "But I immediately felt attached the
region, like I was supposed to be there."

Maggie grew enamored of Nepal's natural beauty, as well as the sense
of community and optimism in its people, but she was also deeply
affected by the orphans she met in the villages. She often saw one
young Nepalese girl breaking rocks on the side of a dry river bed. The
girl had no school, no family; she had nothing, but she still smiled
and waved every time Maggie walked by. The girl's name was Hema.

"It was really this rude awakening," Maggie said. "I thought, it only
takes $5 admission and $5 for a uniform to put her into school. Why
can't I do that?"

So Maggie did. And then she put a few other young girls into school,
too. And she realized she could do so much more by staying in Nepal
and dealing with the refugee problem at its source, rather than
waiting for these kids to flee to India, or, worse, get stuck at the
border and find themselves victims of human trafficking or domestic
servitude. She realized she wanted to give these kids a real,
permanent home.

That was when Maggie called her parents from a "rickety phone booth in
the middle of nowhere" and asked them to wire her life savings - $5000
she'd earned from babysitting in high school - over to Nepal. After a
lengthy conversation ("I don't really remember what I said, exactly,"
Maggie laughed) her parents agreed to send the money.

Maggie bought a piece of property in Surkhet, Nepal, and assembled a
team from the local community to help her dig the initial foundation
for an orphanage that would double as a home for herself. But soon,
Maggie realized she'd need more resources if she actually wanted to
get it built. So she flew back to New Jersey and worked. She babysat,
dogsat, house-sat, held garage sales, bake sales, and anything else
she could possibly do to raise more money. Local papers eventually
picked up Maggie's story, and soon checks from admirers started
pouring in. In five months, Maggie raised close to $60,000.

With this added financial support, Maggie and her team in Surkhet were
able to continue the construction and finish Maggie's home. She formed
a Nepali board of directors and established her orphanage, which she
called the Kopila Valley Children's Project. She registered as an NGO.
She was only 22 years old.

Kids started moving in almost immediately and Maggie's vision was
realized. "I could see exactly what I wanted," she said. "I had
visited orphanages, I could create a model that works based on how I
grew up. I want these kids to raise animals, to take care of each
other."

But Maggie didn't stop with the orphanage. Last year she also
established a school in Surkhet -- the Kopila Valley Primary School --
which currently enrolls 230 students and 14 full-time teachers. The
kids eat a full, nutritious lunch every day, sometimes their only
daily meal, given that they live in an area where 50% of kids under
five are malnourished and malnutrition is the cause of 70% of deaths
under the age of five.

Maggie's work is all done under the banner of her non-profit,
BlinkNow. Its mission is to "empower young people to become pioneers
in developing their own solutions to world poverty."

"I feel there's a big shift going on in the world, and people are not
okay with the way kids are living," Maggie said. "I think people are
really starving for hope."

Today, Maggie is 24 years old and has formal custody of 40 Nepalese
children, all of whom originally came to her with no family, no money,
and no education. Many were abused. She has provided all of them with
basic medical care and food, and she has taught them to read and
write. "The first little girl I took in is a genius," Maggie said.
"She learned English in only a couple months and she reads every book
I give her. I could see her going to Harvard or something."

When Maggie's own parents visit her in Nepal, her kids refer to them
as "grandmother and grandfather." They continue to help her out as
much as they can, especially with organizing board meetings and
dealing with tax receipts. While Maggie is home in the U.S, her
younger sister is back in Nepal, working at the orphanage.

"A lot of people think I grew up in a teepee or some crazy out there
family, or I was raised in a hut in Africa," she said. "But I just
tell them I'm a regular girl from Jersey."

Watch Maggie speak about her journey below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/01/maggie-doyne-blinknow-nepal_...