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Dedicated to
improving the lives of people -- especially women and children -- in the
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Our Background and History The Rogue Gateway Rotary Club of Grants Pass elected to develop the Bhotechaur healthcare clinic as a World Community Service Project. Representing Rogue Gateway Rotary, Catherine Wood traveled to Nepal on a planning mission in September 2000. She trekked to Bhotechaur, saw the old building, and met with throngs of villagers eager to have a healthcare facility. She forged partnerships with the Rotary Club of Kathmandu and with the Bhotechaur village council. Over the next three years she pulled all the pieces together to make the project a reality.
Nepal is located in South Asia, sandwiched between China and India
Thousands of private schools have sprung up in and around Kathmandu in response
to the inadequacy of the public education system in Nepal. Catherine
investigated a number of them and found Galaxy School, an exemplary institution
with a visionary founder and head mistress. She learned that $1,500 would pay
for everything for one year for one boarding student. This amount is far beyond
the reach of the vast majority of Nepalis. She decided that she would help Samip
by paying for his education at Galaxy School. Catherine wanted to give Samip a hand up, not a handout, so she and Samip made an agreement and signed a “Moral Contract” to formalize their expectations. In return for Catherine’s promise to pay for his education at Galaxy School to Grade 12, Samip promises to be a good student, to never in his life to beat or otherwise abuse a girl or a woman (domestic abuse is a very big problem in this part of the world), and someday to help a young Nepali girl get an education. In this manner Catherine hoped to educate a child, affect a shift in a young man’s thinking about women, and help a girl. When Catherine returned home to Oregon, her friends and acquaintances asked her what she was doing in Nepal, and she told them her story. One couple was so intrigued that they asked her to please find a young boy that they could help in the same way. Catherine told them about Anish and they offered to help him out. Similarly, another friend offered to help Prajwal. About that time, it occurred to Catherine that she had hit upon an original idea that would appeal to people who wanted to help someone less fortunate in a direct and personal way. Thus, in June of 2002 Catherine gathered together a group of intelligent, energetic, compassionate people from her local community and Bright Futures Foundation was born.
Bright Futures Foundation is a direct outgrowth of Catherine’s experiences in Nepal. The nonprofit organization was incorporated on June 19, 2002. The Internal Revenue Service has determined that Bright Futures Foundation is a tax-exempt charitable Section 501(c)(3) organization. Donors may deduct contributions as provided by law. Our Employer Identification Number is 01-0726380. The organization’s major purposes are to promote awareness and increase public understanding of the dire education and health circumstances that people face in desperately poor countries of the world, and to provide direct educational and health aid to needy people in those countries. We currently have a healthcare project and an education project, both of which are in Nepal.
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Bright Futures Foundation Copyright © 2007 Bright Futures Foundation. All rights reserved. Last updated 11/2/07 |
During the month that Catherine was in Kathmandu working on the Rotary heathcare
clinic project, she befriended three young boys – Samip, Anish, and Prajwal.
Samip, who spoke a little bit of English, was Catherine’s unofficial guide to
some of the sites in Kathmandu. She spent time with each of the boys and their
families, witnessing for herself the grueling hardships of life in Nepal and
marveling at the hospitality of the Nepali people. She learned about the public
education system and found it tantamount to no education at all. There simply
are no funds available for books or other school supplies, no electricity, no
chalk, sometimes no teachers. Catherine was dismayed that her new friends had no
real hope of a meaningful education -- or a future -- unless they could somehow get into a private
school.
While Catherine was developing her innovative ideas for educating children in
Nepal, she was also spearheading the efforts to reconstruct the old building in
Bhotechaur. Through fundraising efforts and grants, Rotary raised the money
needed for the construction effort. The Kathmandu Rotary Club and the Bhotechaur
village council contracted for and oversaw the onsite construction work. Bright
Futures Foundation provided a liaison among the Rotary Clubs in the USA and
Nepal and the local village
council. Despite the difficult terrain, inclement weather, ongoing political
instability within Nepal, and the frustrations inherent in trying to get
anything done in one of the least developed nations in the world, work on the building was completed
in late 2003. The Bhotechaur Health Clinic opened for business in December 2003,
the triumphant product of a grassroots effort by villagers with a dream and an
inspired collaboration between Rotary Clubs on opposite sides of the planet.