June 20, 2025

Thank you for envisioning the next 35 years at Founder’s Day 2025!

On May 29, 2025, the NYF Community gathered in San Francisco for our annual Founder’s Day event. We welcomed over 160 guests at the Golden Gate Club, and together, raised our glasses (and bid cards!) to celebrate Nepal Youth Foundation’s 35th anniversary.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the evening—old and new friends alike—and to all those who sent us their good wishes but couldn’t attend in person. It always brings our team such joy to be surrounded by like-minded people committed to making a difference for Nepal’s children and young adults.

This Founder’s Day, we spent the evening reflecting on the past 35 years and looking boldly ahead to the future we’re building together. So far, we raised just over $200,000. This is an incredible amount that will go so far in continuing our core programs and ensuring that Nepal’s rising generation is empowered to thrive. (If you would like to make a gift in honor of Founder’s Day 2025, please click here.)

While we did not have a livestream option this year, our event staff did record the main program. NYF is currently editing the recording to make it more accessible for everyone. Once finished, the recording will be posted on this page. Stay tuned!

35th Anniversary Year Celebration: 35 Alumni Stories!

As NYF celebrates 35 remarkable years of impact, our focus is on our incredible alumni.

Many of NYF’s alumni—graduates from our scholarship programs, the Indentured Daughters Program, the New Life Center, Olgapuri Children’s Village, and more—have gone on to make powerful contributions to Nepal’s society in fields like medicine, environmental protection, legal representation, disability justice, and much more. To show the tremendous impact our graduates are now making, we interviewed a handful of them from the past three and a half decades and featured their stories on large poster boards at Founder’s Day.

Guests enjoyed learning about 12 incredible program graduates and the amazing work they’ve done since receiving NYF support. These 12 stories have been published on our website here.

A guest at Founder’s Day 2025 reads about NYF alumna Shital Chaudhary. Shital graduated from Olgapuri Vocational School’s Electrical Training program in 2022. Shital was unfazed at being the only woman in a group of 23 trainees. She thrived in the course. After earning her electrician’s certification, Shital eventually joined Olgapuri Vocational School’s Electrical Program as an instructor. Today, Shital is joyfully helping youths from backgrounds like hers to access the same life-changing opportunities she once received. Read Shital’s story here!

In honor of NYF’s 35th anniversary year, we’ll be highlighting 23 more individuals for a total of 35 alumni stories. They will be released slowly throughout the year on this same page, so we encourage you to check back often!

Our alumni’s continuing work in Nepal is our late founder Olga Murray’s legacy in action—and the outcome of your incredible support. We hope these stories illustrate how your generosity impacts more than just the one individual, but also their family, friends, and entire communities for generations to come.

Thank you, Som Paneru, for 30 years of service and leadership!

At Founder’s Day 2025, in addition to celebrating NYF’s 35th Anniversary, we also thanked President Som Paneru for his 30 years of dedicated work and service at NYF. Our U.S. Board of Directors surprised Som with an award on stage, citing his outstanding leadership as the foundation of NYF’s success.

In 1989, NYF’s President, Som Paneru, was an early recipient of what would later become our College Scholarship Program. He joined the NYF team in 1995 as Program Assistant, and then succeeded Olga in 2012 as President. Today, we thank Som for 30 years of outstanding leadership, service, and dedication at NYF!

Som joined the Nepal Youth Foundation team in 1995 as a Program Assistant, but his connection to NYF started in 1989. In his touching remarks, Som shared his own story. 35 years ago, he had set his own dreams aside and dropped out of college to support his younger siblings so they could stay in school. His long-time mentor, Preb Stritter, a former Peace Corps volunteer, introduced him to Olga Murray. Both Preb and Olga believed strongly in Som’s potential, and Olga offered him a spot in what would later become NYF’s College Scholarship Program. This scholarship led Som to where he is now—succeeding Olga as President of one of Nepal’s most respected and successful youth-focused organizations.

“Olga’s steadfast belief in the power of young people lives on in me and in all of us who work with or support Nepal Youth Foundation. And today, thanks to your generous support, NYF has grown into one of Nepal’s most respected child-focused organizations, delivering hope, dignity, and opportunity for thousands of children and their families each year.”

In his speech, Som provided recent and on-the-ground updates from our programming. He shared how the NYF team has spent the last year navigating Olga’s passing at Olgapuri Children’s Home (NYF’s permanent, family-style children’s home in Kathmandu) through private memorials and age-specific support sessions led by Ankur Counseling Center.

He also touched on a crisis in Nepal that had been unfolding for years—the significant outflow of labor migrants. With few job opportunities available at home and the lack of a skilled labor force, millions of young Nepali people have felt that they had no choice but to leave the country in search of work abroad. Today, an estimated 3.5 million Nepalis (14% of Nepal’s population) are working abroad—many in unsafe, exploitative conditions. This is where NYF’s work at Olgapuri Vocational School comes in.

“By providing high-quality, hands-on training in fields like electrical work, plumbing, welding, tailoring, carpentry, and greenhouse farming, we are equipping young people—especially those from rural communities—with the tools they need to build successful careers in Nepal. This past year alone, over 600 youth completed training, and nearly 90% are already launching businesses or entering the workforce in high-demand roles.”

Som then shared exciting updates on NYF’s Caste Equality Project—which is now in its third year of programming. In our Educating Dalit Lawyers scholarship program, 31 talented young Dalit students are pursuing legal degrees in some of Nepal’s most competitive law programs.

And in Nepal’s Saptari District, NYF is already making a significant impact in Dalit-majority villages. Som shared updates about our Community Learning Centers in two villages in Saptari—vibrant, locally-run hubs for children and their families. Thanks to generosity from the NYF Community, we inaugurated two of these centers in September 2024. We’re proud to share that NYF is currently constructing three more.

Our Peer Counseling Program is up and running at these centers. 30 trained young women (ages 13-19) are now leading monthly mental health support groups. The centers have also been providing play-based early childhood education and reliable childcare services, as well as educational services like after-school tutoring, school re-entry “bridging courses”, adult literacy classes, and women’s cooperatives. And in addition to all of these incredible programs, hot nutritious meals are being prepared and served on site.

Som ended his remarks with deep gratitude for the NYF Community. “Olga would be over the moon,” he said, reflecting on all the progress NYF has made already this past year thanks to your support.

“Thank you for walking this journey with us—for believing in their potential, and for helping us build a more just, empowered, and compassionate Nepal—one child at a time.”

The Olgapuri Legacy Fund: NYF’s Endowment Campaign

Last year, NYF announced the launch of the Olgapuri Legacy Fund: an endowment campaign to ensure that the children at Olgapuri Children’s Village are cared for in perpetuity. This was one of Olga’s greatest wishes: to ensure the future of Olgapuri. As always, she put her money where her heart was. To help jumpstart the legacy campaign, she endowed her beautiful Sausalito, California home to a trust that will contribute to the fund.

At Founder’s Day 2025, Tanya Bodde, Secretary of NYF’s U.S. Board of Directors, spoke alongside her husband, Peter Bodde, former U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, to provide an exciting update about our endowment campaign. Together, they shared that thanks to several long-time NYF champions, we’ve now raised $4.5 million toward our $6 million goal.

Tanya and Peter Bodde lived in Nepal for many years when Peter was the US Ambassador to Nepal and Tanya was a humanitarian aid volunteer. Tanya has served on NYF’s Board of Directors since 2017. They both deepened their commitment to NYF in 2024 by co-chairing the new **Olgapuri Legacy Fund**.

The Boddes then highlighted the importance of focusing on NYF’s annual fundraising goal. The funds raised in celebration of Founder’s Day 2025 will directly support the work that NYF is doing at the moment. This work, as Peter stated poignantly in his remarks, is needed now more than ever as so many other organizations reliant on government aid are disappearing.

If you would like to learn more about the Olgapuri Legacy Fund, please reach out to NYF’s U.S. Executive Director, Ryan Walls at ryan@nepalyouthfoundation.org.

Empowering the next generation: The Emerging Leaders Council

Finally, at the end of the program, NYF’s Development Coordinator, Aryaa Regmi, and Som Paneru’s daughter, Karuna Paneru, announced the launch of NYF’s new Emerging Leaders Council—a group of young leaders passionate about making a difference in Nepal and supporting NYF’s mission.

Aryaa and Karuna shared the stage at Founder’s Day 2025 to speak about NYF’s new Emerging Leaders Council. 14 young leaders have already joined this growing group, and we held our first general meeting on May 16, 2025.

Born out of a desire to engage the next generation of the NYF Community, this volunteer initiative will bring together young students and professionals around the world who have a strong connection to Nepal—whether by heritage, experience, or a shared commitment to making a difference. Members of the Emerging Leaders Council will work with NYF’s fundraising staff to engage in a variety of projects to both raise funds for and bring awareness to our work in Nepal. We also envision members spearheading initiatives to increase NYF’s Nepali-American supporter base, organize cultural events in their communities, and grow their own professional networks.

Interested in learning more about the Emerging Leaders Council? Reach out to Aryaa Regmi at aryaa@nepalyouthfoundation.org.

Thank you all again for an incredible 35 years of impact. Here’s to the next 35 years!

Thank you to everyone who registered, attended, participated, and donated. Thanks, too, to anyone who invited a friend or spread the word. A very special thank you goes to filmmakers Roy Cox and Robin Mortarotti; to the volunteers, board members, advisory board members, and staff working behind the scenes; to our Nepal team for all they do to run our programs, and of course, to Som Paneru and each of our speakers for their heartfelt remarks.

We can’t wait to share more updates soon, especially from the communities where your impact is already being felt. Thank you again, and Dhanyabad!

If you would like to see more photos from Founder’s Day 2025, click here to view a password–protected gallery. All NYF email subscribers have been given the password. Please contact info@nepalyouthfoundation.org if you missed the email or need the password again to access the photo gallery.