World Cup Qatar 2022: The Need for Vocational Training in Nepal

World Cup Qatar 2022 is the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East—and only the second to be held entirely in Asia. This global sports tournament should be a time of great celebration and unity.

Unfortunately, as fans across the world tune in to cheer for their favorite teams, a much less joyful story has come to light. That story is about the thousands of migrant workers from places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal who built the World Cup 2022 stadiums and other infrastructure necessary for Qatar to host this massive event.

These migrant workers have recounted stories of horrific working and living conditions—and many have died. (We have compiled a list of news stories below.)

Most of the stories we’re seeing published in the west place the blame on Qatar—as though without the World Cup, these migrant workers would never have been in such a situation.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the World Cup has only shined a light on a long-term, widespread problem impacting these communities.

Youth underemployment in Nepal hovers around 35%, with many young people unable to access the skills training or other resources necessary to make a living in their own communities. Many of these young people have no choice but to take migrant labor jobs abroad, sending money home to their families as often as they can.

Conditions for these workers are brutal: long hours performing dangerous, back-breaking work for low wages. Many report that their passports are kept by their employers, preventing them from returning home on their own if they wish. Health care options are effectively non-existent. Unfortunately, many Nepalis in this situation pass away or become seriously injured—and their selfless efforts to create a better life for their children leave them worse-off than when they began. The death toll among migrant workers from Nepal has been steadily increasing for years—and the majority of these deaths are not happening in Qatar.

This has been the reality for millions of Nepali young people long before Qatar began designing their World Cup stadiums. And it will continue after the World Cup has ended.

At NYF, we believe that the best way to end this cycle isn’t by focusing on conditions in Qatar and other countries that rely on migrant labor. Rather, it’s by creating better working opportunities at home in Nepal (and other home countries!).

This approach allows individual young people to access lucrative careers close to home, creating opportunities for economic and infrastructure growth in their own communities. NYF’s Vocational Education & Career Counseling programs and Olgapuri Vocational School were designed to provide exactly this kind of alternative for young Nepalis.

Here are just a few stories that illustrate the impact of these programs!

Sustainable Agricultural and Entrepreneurship Training

Kalpana got married soon after she was freed from kamlari bondage. She settled with her husband’s family on their small plot of rented land. They have five children, and were eager to give them the best opportunities possible.

Her husband considered taking a job overseas to make extra money, but he and Kalpana were both anxious about this option. When Kalpana heard about NYF’s one-month SAAET Project, she signed up right away, participating in the November 2021 course.

Immediately after the training, in December, she enlisted her husband to help her construct their first greenhouse. They started planting off-season vegetables on their land, and success was immediate.

Kalpana is now growing highly marketable tomatoes, bitter gourd, cucumbers, pumpkins, and cauliflower. She is currently making a profit of 20,000 Nepali rupees per month (minimum wage in Nepal is 13,450 rupees per month, or $115).

This school year, Kalpana used some of her profits to register her two school-aged children in a private school. “The economic independence I’m gaining from greenhouse farming has made me confident in every aspect,” she says proudly.

Though some programs are designed especially for women, we’ve found that our entrepreneurial graduates often enlist the help of their husbands when launching their new businesses. Not only does this maximize their effectiveness and profits—it creates jobs in the home community, allowing families to build financial success as a team!

OVS Construction: Carpentry

Ashok, 20, grew up in Dolakha District with his family of five. They depend on subsistence farming for their livelihood—an extremely tough lifestyle in mountainous regions.

Ashok is a smart, fastidious young man with strong attention to detail. He knew he was capable of providing much more for his family than farming allowed, and he dreamed of living somewhere outside of his village. But without access to training or apprenticeship opportunities, and no money for traveling to a vocational school, he wasn’t sure how to kickstart a new career.

In early 2022, Ashok heard about a career orientation presentation being offered by NYF in a nearby village. Curious, he attended. He was shocked to hear that the program was free for eligible young adults—including travel and room and board during the three-month course!

Ashok submitted an application for the Carpentry Training course and was placed in the March 2022 session on Olgapuri Campus.

After receiving his certification three months later, Ashok worked as a paid apprentice at a large furniture house in Kathmandu. His performance there was so impressive that the employer offered him a full-time job in June. Ashok is making around $225 per month—nearly twice Nepal’s minimum wage. He’s sending much of it home to support his family.

With his highly-valued skills, Ashok has the ability to shift jobs at will without ever leaving Nepal. He considers this NYF training to be the most important milestone of his career to date!

OVS Construction: Plumbing

Reeta*, 25, lives in a hilly region in western Nepal with her husband. One day, while the COVID pandemic was ongoing, Reeta learned that an Olgapuri Vocational School “satellite” plumbing training program was coming to their area. She signed up for the program right away, but her husband wasn’t so sure. He, like many others, considered plumbing to be a man’s job.

When Reeta mentioned this domestic push-back in class, NYF plumbing trainer Sailesh Khatri offered to meet with Reeta’s husband to talk about his concerns. Though Reeta’s husband was uncomfortable at first, he was willing to listen as Sailesh explained the special value of a skilled trade for a woman. Besides, Sailesh added, Reeta was showing a real knack for the work!

Eventually, Reeta’s husband decided to wait and see what happened once Reeta was certified. He didn’t need to wait long before realizing that Reeta and Sailesh were right.

After completing the program in February 2021, Reeta was hired as an on-call technician for a major government project. She is responsible for all the plumbing repair in her village and is paid accordingly!

We’re especially proud of the community-wide impact our plumbing program is having in rural communities. For more on this, check out a story we shared in April 2022.

World Cup Qatar 2022 Highlights Opportunities for Growth

Working grueling overseas migrant jobs isn’t just physically demanding. It’s incredibly lonely. It’s discouraging to build marvelous infrastructure for strangers when family members back home don’t have access to such luxuries. Because of the ways they are treated, migrant workers also often feel isolated, unknown, and even disposable.

When following up with NYF’s young vocational training graduates, many of them report great pride and satisfaction about working within their own communities. Vocational training programs like ours are transforming individual lives. They are also improving entire villages in the process—not only in a physical sense, but in an emotional and psychological sense as well.

Let’s make sure the lessons learned during World Cup Qatar 2022 lead into more empowering opportunities for young adults in Nepal. Your donation today will help us continue offering these incredible courses to young people throughout Nepal.

Learn more about the workers behind World Cup Qatar 2022

• Human Rights Watch – FIFA/Qatar: Migrant Workers Call for Compensation for Abuses
• The Washington Post – Families of migrant workers who died in Qatar are waiting for answers
• The New York Times – The World Cup’s Forgotten Team
• Reuters – In a stadium of their own, migrant workers say their sweat made World Cup happen
• CBS News – Qatar acknowledges “between 400 and 500” workers died preparing for World Cup
• PBS News Hour – Migrant workers recount abuse while building stadiums for World Cup in Qatar
• BBC News – Qatar World Cup: Families seek answers over migrant worker deaths

Happy Holidays from Olga Murray!

A Letter of Gratitude from NYF’s Founder

I always count my blessings on Thanksgiving, but this year, my gratitude is more heartfelt than ever.

The first among many things to be grateful for is that I am returning to Nepal right after the holiday, after an almost three year absence because of Covid. I haven’t been away this long in more than 35 years, and I have missed the children more than I can say. So much has changed in the interim, with some of the older kids having left Olgapuri for college, and 15 new adorable little ones have joined the Olgapuri family. Their loving presence in my life is a constant source of joy.

Another highlight will be meeting the Dalit students who have come to Kathmandu from their remote communities to attend law school through our new Educating Dalit Lawyers program. Many of them are young girls (around 17 years old), all exceptionally smart, from towns and rural villages all over the country. This is the first time many of them have been to a big city, so a whole new world is opening up to them.

These passionate young people are coming of age in a culture that still treats members of their caste with dismissiveness and cruelty.

It will be a thrill to see them blossom into confident, passionate, and capable young lawyers ready to advocate for their community and bring about tremendous positive change.

I graduated from law school 68 years ago, at a time when there were very few women lawyers. In my career, I saw first-hand what a difference passionate lawyers can make in supporting social change! It is an incredible privilege to be a small part of these Dalit students’ journey. One of the first things I will do after arriving in Nepal is have them all for dinner so that we can get acquainted, and just maybe I might be able to offer some useful advice to these young women in spite of our 80 year age difference!

Happy Holidays,

Olga Murray
NYF Founder and Honorary President

Don’t forget to share your GivingTuesday NYF testimonial! This 5-minute gift will help us share NYF’s transformative message and grow our community in 2023.

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Ensure your #LoveWorks this end-of-year season.

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The gifts received between now and December 31st will determine the number of young people NYF can support in 2023.

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New US Executive Director: Ryan Walls!

Dear NYF Friends,

It’s hard to believe October is already half-gone! We feel like we were celebrating Founder’s Day together only a few short weeks ago.

Now the Nepali festival season is upon us. In the first week of October, families all over Nepal gathered to celebrate the most auspicious festival of the year, Dashain. During this time, young people received blessings of abundance from their elders. They also enjoyed wonderful traditions like colorful processions, kite flying, seasonal games, bamboo swings, fairs, carnivals, and delicious feasts. Gifts were exchanged and many wonderful memories were made as well.

And Tihar is right behind! This festival begins this upcoming weekend. Tihar gives Nepalis the opportunity to celebrate valuable relationships like those between mankind and our canine friends—as well as between sisters and brothers.

In Nepal, this time is all about honoring and strengthening important, loving, constructive relationships.

That’s why we think this is such a lucky moment to be announcing the arrival of our new U.S. Executive Director, Ryan Walls!

Ryan Walls will officially start here at NYF on October 24^th, 2022, but we can hardly wait to begin our journey together! He has impressed everyone on the Board and on the U.S. team, plus Som, not only with his background, but also with his enthusiasm for the work we do and his approach to teamwork.

We’ll be sharing more about Ryan soon, but suffice it to say that we’re confident we’ve found a great fit for NYF. Most importantly, we think our NYF Community will really like him.

“We are delighted with the selection of Ryan J. Walls as our new U.S. Executive Director.  Ryan brings a wealth of experience from the non-profit sector with a reputation for working collaboratively and getting things done. He will certainly be a welcome addition to the NYF family!”

Chris Heffelfinger, NYF Board Chair

Olga is super-excited.

And it’s not just because Ryan is an experienced non-profit leader who is collaborative, personable, and smart, but also because he loves Nepal and the Nepali people in particular. Ryan has spent time living in Nepal and visiting as a traveler. He describes his time there as “a formative experience which shaped his worldview.” Olga knows this devotion to Nepal and its people very well, so she is undoubtedly thrilled to have found a new Executive Director who shares her personal love for this remarkable country.

Som agrees that Ryan’s prior connections to Nepal are an added advantage that provide an instant connection to NYF and the work we do. He is also very impressed with Ryan’s dynamism, positive-thinking, and deep desire to work for the children and youth of Nepal. He is especially looking forward to partnering with Ryan as the Caste Equality Project gathers steam in the coming years and continuing to build on the collaborative spirit across NYF’s global community!

Welcome aboard, Ryan Walls!

With best wishes for a joyful autumn,

Som Paneru, Olga Murray, NYF staff, and our Board of Directors

P.S. Keep an eye on our social media because we’ll be posting updates about Ryan’s first days! Additionally, there’ll be highlights from the Nepali festivals at Olgapuri!

Happy 6th Anniversary, Olgapuri Children’s Village!

On September 25, 2016, NYF formally inaugurated Olgapuri Children’s Village—a beautiful, permanent home for children in Nepal whose family members are unable to care for them. When it opened, we were hopeful that it would be everything we dreamed of: a remarkable place full of love, empowerment, and growth.

Here we are in 2022, celebrating the start of Olgapuri’s sixth year of operation. With each year, we’ve made the village even better than it was before. It has truly become everything that we had hoped it would be. And it’s all thanks to the NYF Community. Dhanyabad!

“We have designed these facilities thoughtfully and generously to provide them [the children] with ample comfort so that they can live their lives with dignity, self-esteem, and joy.”

Som Paneru, NYF President. 2016, Inauguration Ceremony at Olgapuri Children’s Village

Happy Olgapuri Day!

September 25 is known as “Olgapuri Day.” Every year, children, staff, and community members celebrate the anniversary of the opening of Olgapuri Children’s Village with delicious food, fun games, lots of dancing, and more. It’s one of the many events that the children enjoy throughout the year.

It also happens to be a great time for us to reflect on all that’s happened that year at Olgapuri. And in 2022, there’s so much to celebrate!

Special Highlights at Olgapuri in 2022*

• Ninety-two children lived at Olgapuri (but no more than 80 at a time). Among them, 14 were new children who were warmly welcomed by the Olgapuri family. Meanwhile, fourteen young adults graduated the 12th grade and moved out of Olgapuri (into dormitories or hostels for college or vocational training). Three kids were able to return to their families due to improved circumstances at home.
• Every student successfully moved forward into the next grade! Due to COVID-19, children at Olgapuri attended online classes until December 2021. They returned to in-person classes in January, and their academic calendar is now back to normal.
• Two young graduates secured the highest scores in their respective schools, ending high school as valedictorians and moving directly into their bachelor’s degree programs. One is pursuing a degree in business at the Ace Institute of Management in Kathmandu, and the other is enrolled in a five-year undergraduate program in law at Kathmandu School of Law.
• New activities were introduced to interested kids, including yoga, meditation, and self-defense classes. Many students report that these extracurriculars are not only fun but are also helping them to focus on their studies!
• Counselors and house parents worked closely with the children to ensure that their anxiety, curiosity, and other challenges (especially related to the pandemic) were addressed appropriately.
• The ‘Olgapuri Children’s Club’, run by the kids themselves, organized fun events like art exhibitions, carnivals, and music shows. At Tihar in early November 2021, they organized an incredibly successful virtual Deusi-Bhailo** event to broadcast through Facebook Live. The Children’s Club used their Deusi-Bhailo to raise money for club activities. They raised the equivalent of $600!
• The children celebrated many special days together—including Dashain, Tihar, the winter holidays, Holi, and their annual communal birthday party—with cake, presents, Tika blessings, campfires, and more.

Looking ahead…

As we move through the end of 2022, the children at Olgapuri are looking forward to celebrating Dashain and Tihar. These two Nepali holidays are full of gift-giving, loving moments of laughter, and joyful memories. They signify a time of warmth and close connection between communities and families.

Thank you so much for your support!

Generosity from friends like you are allowing the Olgapuri kids to grow up safe, nurtured, loved, and supported—part of a unique family system that will always be there when they need it. Thank you.

*Between July 2021 and June 2022.

**Deusi-Bhailo is a beloved Tihar activity practiced in Nepal and some parts of India. Groups of children travel from house to house, singing two special songs: Bhailo sung by girls, and Deusi sung by boys. The singing is accompanied by dancing. After the performance, those in each house give snacks, sweets, and money to the children, and the children give blessings for prosperity in the coming year.

Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home Officially Joins the Nepali Hospital System!

Exciting news! On July 26th, 2022, the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home was formally handed over to the government-run Dadeldhura Hospital in a special ceremony. This marks the successful conclusion of NYF’s work building and launching new Nutritional Rehabilitation Homes—a project that began in 1998.

NYF’s pioneering NRH model has been so successful that it has become a central piece of Nepal’s national work to end childhood malnutrition. Indeed, the government has already built an additional seven facilities throughout the country—with more on the way! Read more about these remarkable facilities here.

About the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home

The Nepali government specifically requested the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home because the children in Dadeldhura District and in multiple adjoining districts were experiencing a very high rate of stunting due to malnutrition. They had identified several of these districts as among the lowest performing in Nepal when looking at rates of stunting, anemia, and low weight in children and mothers of reproductive age.

Mothers in the region were undoubtedly eager to help their babies grow and develop into healthy, active kids and strong, creative young adults. But in many of their households, there’s no room in the budget for empty calories.

Every rupee spent on food is a rupee that can’t be spent on other necessities like rent, medicine, and school. Without access to knowledge about nutrition—what vegetables contain the nutrients kids need and how to combine and prepare foods to maximize nutritional value—mothers can only make their best guesses with the resources they have.

Many of these parents have shared stories of feeling heartache as they watched their children struggling to put on weight in spite of the adults’ best efforts.

Nepal’s government hoped that one of our clinics would provide the medical support and educational resources nearby communities needed to begin reversing this trend.

This 10-bed facility (enough for 10 mother-child pairs) would be NYF’s final NRH construction project—the 17^th such clinic we had built. We completed construction in August 2017 and started operating on September 1^st of that same year.

Achievements at the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home

In the five years since this clinic opened its doors, nine specially trained staff members have made the Dadeldhura Nutritional Rehabilitation Home a pride of the associated hospital. Here are some of their achievements:

• They provided residential treatment and care for 477 children—including diet therapy, 24-hour nursing care, medical check-ups by a pediatrician, and careful monitoring. During these stays, their caregivers, usually mothers, received hands-on training on practical nutrition education and personalized counseling on how to maximize the nutrition in their home diets using only the ingredients available to them.

• They’ve conducted nutritional screenings (and provided personalized nutritional counseling for moms!) for 2,266 children who were visiting the Dadeldhura Hospital for other ailments when malnutrition was a contributing factor.

• Despite not having a designated field staff, NRH staff managed to conduct 56 home visits to follow-up with discharged children who had been severely malnourished enough that their cases required prolonged monitoring.

• They provided community outreach and educational events for their surrounding communities whenever it was necessary, including Breastfeeding Week, Iodine Month, and Nutrition Week.

During the COVID pandemic:

• During COVID-19, They conducted an additional 113 follow-up visits over the phone, coaching caregivers on practical nutrition tips, home hygiene, and child health care at home.

Trainings and Assessments

Staff members have been eager to continue learning to best serve their young patients. Not only have they all participated in annual “refresher” training through NYF’s Kathmandu Valley flagship NRH, but they’ve also made efforts to specialize by attending trainings held by the Nepali Ministry of Health. Several nurses have also attended a maternal and young infant child nutrition workshop. Others have participated in trainings focused on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Most recently, a nurse attended a 5-day workshop on “Nutrition in Emergencies,” focused on learnings from the COVID pandemic.

In 2021, a government team conducted an assessment on the full Dadeldhura Hospital. The NRH scored highest among all the clinical settings associated with the hospital.

This incredible work will continue, with NYF still providing follow-up training for NRH staff members across the country. This includes those providing transformative services in Dadeldhura. In fact, we’re providing training for NRH staff members at facilities built entirely by the Nepali government! This training takes place at our flagship Kathmandu Valley NRH, led by our incredible Nutrition Coordinator, Sunita Rimal.

New Opportunities in Childhood Nutrition

Nepal, NYF, and other organizations working to combat childhood malnutrition have made tremendous strides over the 24 years since we first began providing holistic nutritional care. But the work isn’t finished.

At NYF, we strive to design programs that can one day be sustainably taken over by the communities they are serving. This keeps us at the forefront of social innovation in Nepal—focusing our attention on developing new, focused, daring programs that respond to the toughest challenges.

With the Nepali government now building and operating NRHs on its own, NYF’s nutrition team sees new opportunities to conduct life-saving Nutrition Outreach Camps in more and more remote regions of the country.

As Nepal works to improve its nationwide infrastructure, it must contend with its unique, dramatic geography. Sharp elevation shifts throughout the country make building and maintaining roads and bridges incredibly difficult. As a result, many villages are still only accessible on foot. Historically, we’ve struggled to persuade some parents to bring their severely-malnourished children to the nearest NRH, as the journey to the closest one was often several days long and potentially dangerous.

Now when we find children in these areas in need of immediate medical care, there’s an NRH within much closer reach than there has ever been before. That makes it so much easier to save more lives and introduce nutritional education to eager communities.

Thank you!

Thank you so much for being part of this journey. We are so grateful to everyone who has helped make this chapter of NYF’s journey such a transformative success—not only for the individual children we’ve nourished, but for the country as a whole.

Donate Today

As Nepal recovers from the COVID pandemic and finds a “new normal”, NYF is hard at work launching new initiatives, keeping our promises to those already in our care, and integrating new learnings from the past two years. Please help us continue to grow our impact by making a generous gift today right here on our website!

Make-A-Will Month

National Make-A-Will Month began on August 1st. Have you drafted or updated your will and estate plans recently? No matter where you are in your life, now is the perfect time for this important task!

Estate planning isn’t just about money. It’s about love and peace of mind. Whether you’re 18 or 80, having an up-to-date will is the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones.

In your estate plan, you decide, in detail, how to distribute your assets and property. This includes not only items like stocks, homes, vehicles, cash, and jewelry, but digital assets and pet care as well.

Including NYF or another nonprofit in your estate plans

Including a nonprofit in your estates plans like your will and/or as a beneficiary of your accounts can be as simple as adding a single sentence or amendment to your will.

Leaving part of your estate to a nonprofit is also great way to reduce estate taxes for your heirs.

Popular ways of making these planned gifts include leaving a specific amount, leaving a percentage of a donor’s total wealth, or designating the remainder of a donor’s estate after other bequests have been paid. Additionally, if you decide to designate a charity as a beneficiary, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can always decide to leave any percentage you wish to one or multiple charities.

See below for more information about the different ways you can include NYF (or other charities) in your estate plans:

• Planned Giving Through Your Will
• Planning Giving Through Charitable Trust
• Planned Giving with Retirement or Insurance Funds

The Legacy Circle

When you include NYF in your estate plans, you will automatically be invited to join our Legacy Circle!

The Legacy Circle is NYF’s way of saying Dhanyabad, or Thank You, to those who remember us in their estate planning. All you need to do is let us know when you’ve included us in your will or other plans—no minimum bequest required—and you become part of this special group.

Bequests and other planned gifts make an incredible difference for nonprofits like NYF. Indeed, these generous remembrances help bolster organizations like ours through unexpected disasters like earthquakes and pandemics. They truly allow us to maximize impact for the children in our care.

These special donors mean the world to the NYF team. It is a profound honor to be included in a long-time supporter’s estate planning. What a joy to know that our programs in Nepal can continue providing Education, Health, Shelter and Freedom for children in Nepal for years to come!

Don’t know where to start? Try FreeWill.com!

Whether you are starting your very first will or simply reviewing your existing plan, we hope you set aside time during the month of August to consider these impactful plans. FreeWill.com is an excellent, nonprofit-friendly place to start!

FreeWill’s user-friendly interface helps you create a real, legally-binding will based on your state and your unique circumstances. It’s also completely free. They may even remind you of an asset you’ve forgotten to include!

NYF Launches Phase I of Caste Equality Project: Educating Dalit Lawyers

We are so thrilled to officially announce the launch of Educating Dalit Lawyers (EDL), the first phase of NYF’s Caste Equality Project! Educating Dalit Lawyers is an enriched law school scholarship for graduating Dalit high schoolers aiming to become human rights lawyers.

In partnership with Dignity Initiative, a Dalit-led NGO based in Kathmandu, NYF will provide incoming law school students with full-ride scholarships through five years of law school at some of Nepal’s best colleges. We’re also excited to provide accommodation and food stipends; extracurricular, mentorship, and leadership opportunities; and internship placement support.

As of now, we have received over 100 applications from hopeful students from all seven of Nepal’s provinces. Applicants come from a strong mix of male and female candidates, with individuals coming from a wide variety of Dalit subcastes.

Our team will select 20 students who will come to Kathmandu to prepare to take Nepal’s rigorous law school entrance exam. The top 15 students will receive the full scholarship.

Your Support

Join us in launching NYF’s most daring program yet! NYF is currently raising funds in support of Educating Dalit Lawyers. One year of support for each student in this program costs approximately $4,000. To support these determined students, please donate now.

Timeline

July 2022 – Testing Prep
20 promising students are selected from applicants from all over Nepal and brought to Kathmandu to attend prep classes for the competitive law school entrance test. All expenses are paid.

Aug. 2022 – Law School Entrance Exams

Sept. 2022 – Selection & Mentorship
The top 15 students are selected for the full 5-year scholarship. As they receive acceptance notification from law schools, NYF facilitates housing, enrollment, and other logistical matters. Courses begin. Each student is matched with a human rights lawyer mentor.

Winter 2022 – First Semester!
As classes get underway, NYF works with Dignity Initiative to organize special program features like advocacy trainings, leadership activities, workshops, celebrations, and more. These activities dovetail with law school, enhancing it without interrupting it.

Spring 2023 – A New Start
NYF releases the 2nd year’s call for applications across the country, committing to select an additional 15 law school students.

Summer 2023 – First Annual Dalit Law School Student Conference
NYF, Dignity Initiative, and our scholarship recipients hold a networking conference for Dalit law school students across Kathmandu, creating an opportunity to make connections, present learnings, share personal stories, and more while practicing skills like public speaking.

2027 – Graduation & the Bar Exam
NYF’s first group of 15 lawyers completes their final year of law school. Each graduate is matched with a paying internship opportunity at a local law firm, allowing them to gain experience while preparing for Nepal’s Bar Exam. NYF also provides community-based legal awareness workshops, including fieldwork in Dalit communities experiencing significant hardship. NYF funds all expenses associated with preparing for and taking the Bar Exam at the end of this period.

Spring 2028 – First Graduates Now Practicing Law!

Questions about this project?

• Contact us through our website
• Download the one-page flyer with more details about Educating Dalit Daughters
• Visit the Educating Dalit Daughters program page
• Learn more about the Caste Equality Project

Founder’s Day 2022: Thanks for Celebrating with Us!

Founder’s Day 2022—held over Zoom on Tuesday, June 7^th, 2022—was a tremendous success!

Thank you to everyone who signed in live to commemorate another remarkable year of transformative impact in Nepal! Our global team deeply appreciates your many messages of congratulations and support. Olga, especially, is touched by the well-wishes in celebration of her life and work.

The team in Nepal, led by Som Paneru, was so delighted to see everyone’s excitement during the event. They were deeply gratified by the warmth and encouragement our community shared with guest speakers Jeena Maharjan and Bishnu Chaudhary. If you were unable to attend Founder’s Day in person (or if you would like to share the celebration with a friend or over social media), the full event is now available through our YouTube channel.

It was so wonderful to see our remarkable community of loving supporters from across the world, current and former staff members (especially those in Nepal!), and program graduates. Meeting together in this way is such a joy—and we are so grateful you joined in the fun.

Thank you to everyone who registered, attended, participated, and donated. Thanks, too, to anyone who invited a friend or spread the word on social media. A special thank you goes to co-hosts Shrijana Singh Yonjan and Dr. Angela Pal; videographers Roy Cox and Robin Mortarotti; and guest speakers Jeena Maharjan and Bishnu Chaudhary for helping shape the inspiring presentations; author and philanthropist Isabel Allende for her beautiful birthday wish, and to the volunteers, board members, advisory board members, and staff working behind the scenes. And of course, thank you to Olga Murray and Som Paneru for giving us so much to celebrate!

Olga’s 97^th Birthday Goal

We are so excited to share that we exceeded our Founder’s Day 2022 fundraising goal of $97,000 in honor of Olga’s 97^th birthday! This includes donations, pledges, and auction bids.

Thank you to each wonderful supporter who donated in honor of Founder’s Day 2022! Early gifts carried us over halfway to our goal, and the remarkable generosity during our event carried us well over our goal amount. Your gifts will make a transformative difference providing Education, Health, Shelter, and Freedom to children in Nepal!

The warmth, love, and kindness of our incredible community is truly humbling for all of us on NYF’s global team. Perhaps most of all, we are humbled by the trust you place in us with each thoughtful contribution to the causes we share.

Thank you!

Thank you for helping our global team transform lives every day in Nepal. Whether your focus is nutrition programming, girls’ education, vocational and entrepreneurship training for young adults, childhood mental health, or safe housing for kids, YOUR SUPPORT makes a tangible, positive difference in the lives we touch.

Thank you for joining us in daring to tackle some of the toughest, most entrenched challenges facing the children we serve.

Your love is providing Education, Health, Shelter, and Freedom to Nepal’s newest generation—and graduates from our programs are proving that your #LoveWorks. Dhanyabad!

If you have not yet fulfilled your Founder’s Day pledge, or if you would like to make another thoughtful gift, please do so here.

Lucky Winners

Our U.S. team is contacting auction winners and pledge raffle winners. If you have any questions about this process, please reach out to us by emailing info@nepalyouthfoundation.org. You can also call our office using the number on our contact us page.

The Caste Equality Project & Educating Dalit Lawyers

A highlight of Founder’s Day 2022 was our announcement of our ambitious new program, the Caste Equality Project!

Phase 1: Educating Dalit Lawyers launches the summer of 2022. The first group of 15 students will enter Kathmandu law schools at the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year. Olga is ecstatic about the potential these young people have to change their world for the better. Likewise, Som and his team are eager to scale our work in the coming years.

We’ve now published the program pages for these exciting projects (linked above). Meanwhile, we will also be sharing photos, stories, and information about our progress as this information becomes available.

Please keep an eye out for updates right here on our blog about all our programs. We’re so excited to share more with you soon about the impact your support is having on the lives of so many!

Dhanyabad!

Remembering Alison Wright (1961-2022)

Written by: NYF Founder Olga Murray

I am so saddened by the death of my old friend Alison Wright, who died in mid March in Portugal while on a scuba diving expedition in the Azores. Alison was the most adventurous, fearless person I have ever known, with a passion to use her superb photographic talents to better the world.

She traveled to countries I had never heard of and packed more into her life than I thought was possible. From photographing nomads hunting with falcons in Mongolia to living with sex workers in Mumbai to gain their trust before photographing them, to camping out with a pygmy tribe in the Kalahari desert, she seemed impervious to the hardships which would have given pause to an ordinary human being.

But above all, she was passionate about using her incredible talents to better the human condition. She conducted workshops in using photography to effect social change. She started her own foundation to provide health care to a village in Laos, where she almost died after a truck rammed into a bus in which she was a passenger. Alison was a great friend of NYF and took some of the most beautiful and impactful pictures of our projects and our children.

We met more than 30 years ago in Nepal. She visited me there many times, and we had a deep and loving friendship. I will always keep in my heart her love of life and contagious, generous spirit.

At my 95th birthday celebration, Alison Wright presented a video she made for me as a birthday gift. You can watch it below.