On Tuesday, October 11, 2022, Mrs. Doyne came to Blair to talk about her journey of discovering her passions. Her story began much differently than you might expect. After graduating highschool, she took a gap year and attended a program abroad where she worked with children in Nepal. While she was there, she immersed herself in the Nepali culture; she met a six-year-old girl who was breaking stones in a riverbed in order to sell gravel and earn money for her family.
This experience inspired Mrs. Doyne to set out to make a difference for the children of her Nepali community. With the money she had saved up, she put the six-year-old girl into school. Mrs. Doyne realized that in order to make a difference in the community, she had to start by fixing the education. If a girl has access to two to three years of primary school education, everything in her life changes.
As the little girl started to do well in kindergarten, Mrs. Doyne set a goal to be able to walk down the same dry riverbed where she saw the little girl, and not see any children breaking rocks for money. She began putting one child through school at a time, but she realized she was facing a greater problem: 50% of children were not living past the age of five.
She worked with some locals and fundraised at her hometown, in New Jersey, to start rebuilding the community in Nepal. In 2008, she opened the Kopila Valley Children’s Home with a vision to make every child safe, educated, and loved.
From there, the foundation only grew. She opened a school in 2010, which was not only a center for education, but also a place where a child could receive a free meal. Then, in 2018, Kopila Valley’s new green school opened, which was completely self regenerative and built from the earth. It includes a turf field from coconut, a wastewater management system, and solar energy that provides power for the whole community.
Now, she is also helping to train women in women empowerment through the Kopila Valley Girls Club, as an effort to get to the source of the child care problems.
The first little girl Mrs. Doyne aided is now in college, which inspires her to continue pursuing the mission of the foundation.
