In 2015, when BlinkNow decided it was time to expand the campus of its Kopila Valley School, it knew that it was a chance to put its principles into practice.
Not that living its values was a principle new to BlinkNow. The organization was founded in 2008 when a 19 year old backpacker, seeing the poverty that affected children in rural Nepal, realized that she had a responsibility to make a difference. In short order, that young woman, Maggie Doyne, had identified a local team, had her parents wire her life savings of $5,000 to Nepal, and purchased the land that would become the Kopila Valley Children’s Home.
Since then, Maggie, her co-founder Top Malla, and the team at BlinkNow have worked relentlessly to deliver the resources the children of Surkhet required: a school to provide a high-quality education, a health clinic to provide preventative care and basic wellness support, and a women’s center focused on supporting the women who were at the center of struggling communities and families. And they’d done it with their values at the forefront: gender equality, economic empowerment, and environmental sustainability.