What If You Lead With What You Learn?
A Young Man’s Journey to Engage the World by Empowering Women in Rural Nepal
This time last year, I asked “What If Empowering Single Women Could Educate Entire Generations?” on the Huffington Post.
The post featured the work being done by the Yang-Ward Foundation, a non-profit just starting up—and receiving funding from the Clinton Global Initiative.
The Yang-Ward Foundation attracted and compelled me to share it with the world because of its unique approach of intertwining entrepreneurship and education to solve problems in rural Nepal.
Today, I’m pleased to provide an update beyond my previous expectations. Not only has the Yang-Ward Foundation slugged through the tedious process of becoming officially recognized as non-profit, it’s also now recognized as a Top-Rated Nonprofit.
In just one short year, the foundation has been able to empower an entire village of rural, single Nepali women as well as help educate the children of their community.
Education is at the heart of the Yang-Ward Foundation. From helping women learn how to farm in order to provide for themselves, to using the profits from these farming projects to help fund local schools so children can connect to teaching technologies to which they never had access before, the Yang-Ward Foundation has created an all-encompassing model that has been so successful, three other villages are already requesting the Foundation’s help in empowering their communities.
Yes, the vision of the Yang-Ward Foundation is to empower single women in sections of rural Nepal, ravaged by war. Yes, it takes the support of a community to see any idea flower into action. True, the outcomes of the foundation will be measured by the lives it touches, today and over the course of many tomorrows.
But what if one of the biggest problems with such powerful movements is that the person who embodies the spirit behind it and passion pushing it forward rarely gets the recognition he or she deserves?
This happens all too often. What if it’s time to shine a well-deserved light on the person behind the purpose?
Over the years, I’ve gotten to know Yangmali Sahadev Rai, first as a student, then as a person. The dedication he exhibited toward excellence is unmatched by any I”ve met. In spite of personal tragedy and loss over the past year, Rai never once wavered in his commitment to those he served.
While many college students elect to study leadership, Rai has been living it. While countless other graduating students focus on how they can leverage their learning to inflate their bank accounts, Rai has been resolute on how he can use his learning to make the world a better place.
Rural Nepal has nearly half a million impoverished single women, many widowed and abandoned during the civil war. These single women and their children become outcasts in their local communities, no longer supported by their ex-husband’s families, struggling to survive, and barely able to feed themselves and their children, much less send those children to school.
These aren’t the typical concerns for your average college student. Then again, Rai isn’t average or typical in any way.
The Yang-Ward Foundation seeks to turn these “outcasts” into valued contributors to their communities by achieving three key goals:
1) Engage these women in revenue generating agricultural activities that give them financial independence so they can feed and house themselves and their children.
2) Achieve sustainability in which their activities can continue without added, external funding.
3) Make significant contributions to improving education in local schools by donating books, scholarships, and equipment to school libraries and computer labs.
In the end, Rai believes financial independence will return to these women the dignity they deserve as individuals and enable them to help their children prepare for productive futures.
The journey has just begun. What if you take part in supporting the future of women and education in rural Nepal?
You can do your small part to make a big difference by supporting the Yang-Ward Foundation’s Indiegogo campaign.
But what if, in supporting the Yang-Ward Foundation, you’re not just helping empower women and encouraging education for young girls in rural Nepal, you’re also sending a strong message to students around the world that getting an education is only a small part of the learning process?
What if how you lead is as important as what you learn?
Yang-Ward Foundation