Welcome to Ghimire Foundation

Nepal is among the poorest nations in the world. The average person earns about $1 per day. Life expectancy is 57 years compared to 75 for developed countries. Most of the citizens eat two meals a day consisting of dal bat, a scoop of rice with a spoon of lentils on top. Even for tourists and trekkers, the most enduring image of a visit to this country may not be the pristine mountain scenery but shoeless porters carrying double their body weight on their backs, children in villages with huge goiters growing out of their necks, and mothers begging not for money but aspirin. In the remote villages of Nepal, if someone has a serious infection, a burst appendix, or a major medical problem, and there is not enough time to walk three days to the nearest day-long bus trip into the capitol city, they die.

Nepal has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. It ranks among the worst in basic health care services with 90% of the population without access to adequate medical care. In addition to widespread malnutrition and infectious diseases, HIV is becoming an increasing problem. Sex slavers kidnap or buy young girls in rural areas in order to transport them back to brothels where men believe that having sex with virgins will cure them of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. After several years of captivity, the girls are then sent back to their villages where they pass the infection on to others.

It is within this backdrop that the Madhav Ghimire Foundation was established by Jeffrey Kottler, an American psychologist, Kiran Regmi, a Nepalese obstitrician, and Digumber Piya, a community activist and philanthropist, to provide educational opportunities for girls who are at greatest risk. We are a grassroots organization, composed of volunteers who are committed to improving the plight of young women in a neglected region. We have no office, no paid staff, and minimal expenses, so that virtually all donations go to support the education of the girls.

Academically talented girls from poverty-stricken families are selected by school personnel. Their academic fees, uniforms, supplies, and books are covered by the Foundation as long as they continue to perform well in their studies. Yet we recognize that supplying monetary assistance to schools is hardly enough; each girl’s family is visited several times each year by foundation team members, providing support, supervision, counseling, and mentoring. Our goal is nothing less than to grow the next generation of women health professionals, educators, and leaders in Nepal.

A recipient of the Madhav Ghimire Scholarship with her proud parents. She is one of more than a dozen girls in her village who would not have been able to attend school without foundation assistance.