Origins of Educate the Children Known to many as the land of Mount Everest, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world: per capita annual income is only US$322. There is a woeful lack of social and economic infrastructure in the country as a whole, especially in rural areas. People in lower castes and ethnic minority groups in particular suffer from poverty and exclusion. Within these groups, women suffer the most. Educate the Children is committed to making a difference. While visiting Kathmandu in 1989, Pamela Carson noticed how many street children there were. She struck up a friendship with three in particular and learned about their lives on the street. What they most wanted, they told her, was to go to school. Pamela had sold her successful business in Boston and spent time in a Zen monastery in Japan. But in meeting those boys, one of whom she eventually adopted as her own son, she found her life's calling. Pamela arranged to put the three boys in school and so was born Educate the Children's original sponsorship program to aid street children, orphans and other disadvantaged children Pamela threw herself into building an organization so that more kids could have educational opportunities. In 1990 ETC was formally constituted as a nonprofit organization with its head office in Ithaca, New York and an office in Kathmandu led by Kiran Tewari. Three women who Pamela met along the way, Barbara Cook, Freema Hillman and Ursula Zeibarth, worked closely with Pamela and Kirin on a volunteer basis and they all put in countless hours building the organization from its humble beginnings. Sadly, Pamela contracted cancer in 1997 and died in 2000. But her legacy lives on in this dedicated and effective organization.
http://www.etc-nepal.org/
