One Woman Can Make a Difference

By VICTORIA TALBOT Special to the Palisadian-Post In Santa Monica the door is ajar. Stephanie Waisler Rubin is seated at her desk in traditional Nepalese garb. At home, she is a photographer and art teacher at the Brentwood Art Center. In Bhaktapur, she is the American mother to a dozen young girls. Her narrow office is flanked with photos. Photos of smiling family members are on one wall and faces of Nepalese children line the other. She glides up the stairs to make tea in an apartment that is clearly home to small children. Stephanie is married with two children of her own. Toys litter the floor in a happy heap, and Hindu deities grace the d’cor. Her calm demeanor reigns over the pleasant dishevelment. In 1998, Stephanie traveled to New Delhi with her father, Lee, to document on film his work as an artist for the National Gallery of New Delhi. On the trip, she began photographing kids for a book she imagined on Third World children. She took a side trip to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and visited nearby Bhaktapur, Nepal’s third-largest city. Outside her hotel, two ragged boys, Rajesh and Ramu, offered their services as her city guides for a few rupees. Over the next few days, they showed her the ancient city. They were dirt poor. When she returned to the United States, Stephanie was moved to do something significant for the pair. With a receipt from some handcrafts she had purchased from a merchant the two had referred to as ‘uncle,’ she contacted the man and suggested that she would like to help the boys get an education. Several months later, they had worked out the details. She held her breath and sent funds to the uncle to place the boys in school. Three months later, Stephanie received proof that a small contribution could really make a difference. She received a letter from their headmaster with their school report. Excited by the news, she enrolled their siblings until her funds were exhausted. A photographer and children’s art instructor, Stephanie was far from wealthy. But it cost only $900 a year per child to feed, clothe and educate them at boarding school. That is when the concept of a nonprofit foundation came into focus. She returned to Bhaktapur and met a five-year-old girl, Unatti, at Bal Mandir, the state-run orphanage. As a single woman, she could not adopt Unatti, but the seed for the creation of a permanent home for underprivileged girls in Nepal was planted and Unatti Foundation was born. The word unatti means progress and development. Bhaktapur, at the foot of the Himalayas, is a center of culture and religion, noted for architectural and natural beauty. The economy depends for the most part on tourists and the trekkers who stop on their way to climb Mt. Everest. At her Santa Monica home, Stephanie dives into her passion for her girls. Every Monday, there are business meeting on SKYPE, and she ‘talks’ to her girls. Ebullient, she fetches their school reports. ‘See,’ she says. ‘Our girls are learning English on their own computers.’ Through the years, Stephanie has learned that she has a better chance of succeeding if she can start the girls at a younger age. Many have never lived in a family or a home. The most recent additions are 3′, 4 and 5 years old. Ramesh Pradhananda is head of operations for Unatti. His family is fifth generation Bhaktapur. ‘People tell him of orphans and needy kids,’ Stephanie says. ‘He knows; he sees kids on the street. When we have space available, we have potential candidates.’ The new girls include one who lived in the streets with a schizophrenic mother, another child with no mother and a father with tuberculosis, and another girls whose mother committed suicide rather than remain in a bad marriage. When the children arrive, they often suffer from malnutrition and other health issues associated with poverty and poor hygiene. Rajesh and Ramu received three to four years of education. Today, they still correspond with Stephanie. Rajesh is a Malaysian security guard and Ramu is still a city guide. ‘Ramu dropped out early, but his younger siblings finished high school,’ Stephanie says. ‘The lack of support [for sponsored children] from their uneducated parents had been a big struggle in getting the children to continue their studies. They are thinking of finding food for dinner now; not seeing the possibilities of four more years of school.’ She learned a lot from that experience. The Unatti home is simple and clean, but does not provide all the modern conveniences we live with in the affluent West. In Nepal, the average income is $250 a year; literacy is 46 percent and unemployment 42 percent. ‘For me, it’s a fine line between maintaining the integrity of their community and giving them luxuries we take for granted, like hot running water,’ Stephanie explains. ‘My girls have never sat in a bathtub of hot water. I struggle with wanting to take them all to my hotel and let them enjoy what my kids get every night: a bath.’ What started as schooling for two children has grown into a nonprofit organization that is educating a second generation of women. They attend the two top English schools in Bhaktapur (there are seven English schools). They are no longer living in poverty and their future is bright. But Stephanie has big plans. Unatti Foundation has secured land to build a permanent home for the children. The property is large enough to raise chickens and water buffalo, and to plant a kitchen garden. She hopes the girls will learn self-sufficiency and manage the finances for this and their handicrafts business. Today, the project is entirely dependant on donations, but Stephanie plans to teach the girls skills to create handicrafts, manage the business, and market, sell and distribute the products themselves. She hopes the operation will be nearly 50 percent self-sufficient by 2013. In the process, these girls will elevate their entire community. She also hopes to open a school for local women. ‘Everything comes from individual donations from people I know who have seen me travel back and forth. One reason I can do it is because no one here takes a salary,’ Stephanie says. ‘The entire project runs on $30,000 a year. For us, $1,050 takes care of one girl for a year, including everything.’ Only $90,000 is needed to build their dream home. Next year, Stephanie Waisler Rubin and her young family will travel to Nepal. They will not be alone. About 10 families of donors will be joining them. ‘They want their children to meet the children they have been supporting, and we will do a huge child-to-child delivery,’ she says. For that, children here gather used clothing. ‘We hand-carry these items to Nepal where the Unatti girls organize giving these gifts to children even less fortunate than themselves. We document this very moving day and bring the images back to show our American children, who will be able to see the boys and girls who are enjoying their old shoes. By putting a face on it, the kids at home can really see the process.’ For more information, visit www.unattifoundation.org