Other news: How this project came together

While preparing materials for Hot Zone, we wrote the following summary of how each of the people and organizations included in the Team roster above came to be involved in this work for Yubaraj. In addition to serving as an aid for those who want to check our credentials, it also provides a behind-the-scenes look at how an initiative like this might come together.

The summary takes the story from my reading of "Street Dance" right up to the point where we're ready to meet Yubaraj. The posts on this blog take the story from there...

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Team-building

After reading "Street Dance" and volunteering to coordinate this effort, I emailed the 70 Yahoo! members who had voiced an interest in helping Yubaraj. Of the twelve who responded, six also asked to be a part of putting the project in motion. They played a critical role, early on, in guiding the process and keeping me on task as we’ve moved towards our goal of helping Yubaraj.

Within a few day I started emailing people I knew and respected who had some familiarity with nonprofit work in Nepal. Scott Dimetrosky of the International Mountain Explorers Club (IMEC) put me in touch with Scott MacLennan, an IMEC board member who has been active in a number of community-level nonprofits in Nepal and elsewhere. I emailed Scott to tell him about our intent, and he responded with cautious enthusiasm. He knew the potential for good that we wanted to accomplish, but he also knew that supporting one family or individual can cause some strong resentment within a community. We talked at length about the steps we could take to minimize that risk, and Scott ultimately agreed to help us. His support has been fundamental to what we’ve been able to do. First, he put us in touch with both Puskar Gurung (a close friend from Kathmandu who helps with Scott’s nonprofit activities there and who played a key role in finding Yubaraj and developing a relationship with him on our behalf) and Phurbu Tamang (another friend who took the important role of visiting with Yubaraj and his family in their village). Scott has also allowed us to direct funds through his nonprofit organization, the Mountain Fund, something that’s critical to our being able to accept online credit card donations (more about that below). He’s providing that service at no charge so we’re able to pass 100% of those donations to Yubaraj.

I also got in touch with Heather O’Neal, whom I’d heard of but had never met. She runs Of Global Interest, an adventure travel company and Nepal-themed B&B in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has also become an important source of support, both financially (by passing along 100% of donations made by check) and logistically (as described below she was able to meet with Yubaraj and all of our Nepal partners in September).

I also looked for nonprofits in Nepal that could help us place Yubaraj in school. That led to a conversation with Omprakash Gnawali, CEO of the Nepalese Children’s Education Fund, who brought the same management approach (voluntary, transparent, ethical) to his organization that I hoped to bring to this project. Lucky for us, he took a strong interest in what we were doing and we’ve benefited tremendously from his familiarity with family interviews, education options in Kathmandu, and every other aspect of this work.

All of us wanted to be very specific about what we would expect from the volunteer team in Nepal. Together we created a partner document that listed those responsibilities (distribute funds as directed and report all expenses; enroll Yubaraj in school). We also emphasized that, most importantly, this was a voluntary long-term investment to Yubaraj’s future and well-being. Once we were clear about what, we started looking for people to play that role. One of the most qualified prospective partners turned out to be Basu Gnawali, Om’s father, and after several online and telephone conversations he agreed to take on these responsibilities. Basu is an independent financial auditor for nonprofit and for-profit corporations in Kathmandu, so he has the experience with managing funds that we were looking for. As an advisor to the Board of the Nepalese Children’s Education Fund he also has substantial experience in supporting the process of placing children like Yubaraj in boarding schools.

By the end of July 2006, all of the necessary partnerships were in place: In the US, Heather O’Neal, Scott MacLennan, Om Gnawali, and the six Yahoo! members; in Nepal, Basu Gnawali and Puskar Gurung; and GiveMeaning.com to direct donations to the Mountain Fund. We had all established a collective level of trust and respect, strengthened in previous months, that continues to carry the project forward. This took more time than I had expected but the pace was understandable given that we were a diverse group of volunteers who, for the most part, had other full-time commitments and didn’t know each other before coming together for this cause. Through dozens of phone calls and emails (by August my computer’s “Yubaraj” folder held 150+ messages), it became clear that we could consistently count on each other to move this project forward in a way that would honor Yubaraj and our goal to assist with his education.

Developing a budget and a way to collect donations

Over the summer we established a plan and a budget for what we wanted to do. In keeping with the wishes expressed in those first Hot Zone posts, we wanted to help Yubaraj return to school. Basu researched a number of boarding schools in Kathmandu including Banubhakta Memorial Higher Secondary School, Sunrise Boarding School, and Insight Vision School. Each has proven successful for NCEF-sponsored students and has a reputation for providing a good education at a reasonable cost. Of these we selected Insight Vision School as a good option for Yubaraj and based our budget on their costs for tuition, room, and board ($1-2,000 per year depending on the grade). Our total school budget of $6,500, which will support Yubaraj through graduation, includes tutoring, a clothing allowance, and all incidentals. We are also planning for the possibility that Yubaraj’s family might require some assistance while he is in school and no longer earning an income in Kathmandu. We’ve included $1,200 in our fundraising goal to provide this support if it becomes necessary.

These two amounts put our goal at $7,700. After much discussion, we decided it would be unwise to enroll Yubaraj in school before collecting that entire amount, imagining that it would be hard on him to have to leave his life at school if the funding were to fall short. We committed to that plan and set a goal of raising those funds as quickly as possible.

At the same time I was researching methods for collecting donations, checking out internet-based organizations that had a good reputation for little or no cost. Ultimately, the service offered by GiveMeaning.com seemed best suited for what we wanted to do. GiveMeaning.com gives nonprofit projects the capacity to accept online credit card donations and passes along 100% of each donation to our project (they don’t even deduct processing fees). As a bonus, they’re great to work with. Since my first conversation with Tom Williams, their CEO, the support we’ve received from the entire GiveMeaning.com staff has been phenomenal.

Projects on GiveMeaning.com must receive 100 “votes of support” before they’re able to collect online donations. On August 17 we launched a petition drive for these votes. The 100th vote was cast only two weeks later on August 31. With our GiveMeaning.com profile up and running and a newly-created blog ready to keep people informed of our progress, we were ready to collect donations.

We initially wanted to contact Yubaraj only after collecting $7,700 (so we wouldn’t raise any false hopes about what we could do for him), but it became clear that this wasn’t a practical goal. So far we’d received donations totaling $500 – a great start but far from our goal – and we guessed that we needed to confirm Yubaraj’s story before more people would contribute to his education. That became our next priority....