During a special presentation Oct. 20,
Maggie Doyne recounted how a journey from her suburban New Jersey home to a rural Himalayan village changed her life. Doyne is the founder of the
BlinkNow, a nonprofit that funded the construction of a children’s home, women’s center, health clinic and school in Nepal.
When she was 18 years old Doyne took a gap year after graduating from high school to travel the world with the organization LeapNow. During that trip, she spent time volunteering at a children’s home in northern India, where she became friends with a refugee from Nepal during a cease-fire in the Nepalese Civil War. On a visit to the refugee’s childhood home in a rural village in the Himalayas, the trajectory of Doyne’s life altered when she encountered a Nepali girl breaking rocks into gravel. The work earned her a dollar a day, which helped support her family. Distraught by the situation, Doyne decided to use her own money to pay for the girl’s school tuition, uniform and books so she could get an education. She later used $5,000 she had saved for college to buy a piece of land and open a children’s home in Nepal.
That home became Kopila Valley Children’s Home and the nonprofit she launched, the BlinkNow Foundation, funded the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than 400 students.
Doyne recently published a coming-of-age book about her journey, “Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, Healing and Hope,” which underscores that the power to change the world exists within everyone.
She told students that when she was growing up in New Jersey, she had no doubt she would attend college. She had a typical middle-class life, with a suburban house complete with a trampoline in the backyard.
“The goal was always college; it wasn’t about whether you are you going to college, but which college. But I had no idea who I was and I wanted to understand who I was before I went off to college,” she said.
Everything she knew about the stable world she grew up in changed once she was in Nepal where she encountered refugees fleeing conflict, poverty, child labor, trafficking and other human rights violations.
To help vulnerable children in Nepal she first needed to build a children’s home, which she did by partnering with a Nepalese friend and by securing grants and funding.
Since then, Doyne has spent her time caring for children in Nepal. In addition to being the mother of two children, she is legal guardian to more than four dozen children in Nepal.
She urged students to find their own purpose in life, to follow their heart and to be careful not to chase someone else’s dream.
“Change is possible, you don’t have to go 8,000 miles away from where you live,” she told students. “You have the opportunity to be the drivers of the world, you can look for moments when it is appropriate to step in and act.”