Bright Futures in the News

Terrorists be damned – she’s off to Nepal
Catherine Wood not letting thugs keep her from bringing medical care to poor villagers

“When my time is up, it’s up. I refuse to let terrorists get in the way of good work.” – Catherine Wood, Rotary representative

Catherine Wood is a race walker who specializes in climbing hills and covering 10 miles in less than two hours.

That strength and endurance will be called upon in coming weeks as Wood makes numerous trips on foot to a village 7 miles straight up the slopes of the Himalayas. The trailhead begins an hour’s taxi drive from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.

Wood left her Grants Pass home last Friday and is on her way to Nepal with close to $50,000 from local, state and international Rotary clubs to help establish a health clinic that will serve about 50,000 villagers.

It’s the second trip to Nepal for Wood, former director of Josephine County United Way, who spent three weeks in that country last year representing the Rogue Gateway Rotary Club during a feasibility study. This time, she’ll stay for a month while she lays the groundwork for the clinic.

But Wood won’t repeat a mistake she made last year. After trekking up the mountain to Bhotechaur and back in one day – a total of 14 miles – without sufficient water, she became dehydrated and spent a day lying on a bed on the floor in extreme pain.

Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries, said Wood. Most of the country’s 22 million residents live outside the cities and have little access to health care.

After returning to Southern Oregon last fall, Wood reported to the club it would take $48,000 to upgrade an existing building in Bhotechaur (pronounced BO-te-char), purchase and trek medicines and supplies up the mountain to the village, then hire a doctor, dentist and nurses to staff the clinic.

This year, Rogue Gateway Rotary officially took on the project, and Wood began spearheading fund-raising efforts.

After helping to raise $12,000 at both the Gateway and Grants Pass Rotary clubs, Wood applied for and received a matching grant from Rotary’s regional district, which includes all of Oregon and Northern California.

With $24,000, Wood went to Rotary International for another matching grant. On Sept. 20, just a day before she left the country, Wood got final confirmation of the international group’s grant.

Following an initial sightseeing trip to Bhutan – on her own time and dime – Wood will meet with a Nepali engineer to go over plans for retrofitting a vacant building in Bhotechaur. The building, built sometime in the 1970s by another non-profit group, has been vacant for years.

Wood must then get permission from the village’s development committee (their version of a city council) to open the clinic. She must also get approval from the district development committee – a three days’ walk away. That alone will eat up six days of her stay.

“Bhotechaur is at 7,000 feet and is at the mercy of winter storms,” explained Wood. “In summer, they have the monsoons. So there’s a window in the spring and fall when we can actually do the work.”

“Every sack of cement, every beam goes up on somebody’s back,” she noted. “But first, I have to find a contractor and order supplies before they can be carried up the mountain. My hope is that we’ll have the clinic up and running next spring.”

While in Nepal, Wood will also assist a Nepali woman, Aparna Bhatta, who will run a three-day health camp. Wood raised an additional $3,000 at Gateway and the Grants Pass Rotary clubs to fund the camp.

Wood also enlisted the help of a physician and three nurses from Eugene, who agreed to staff the clinic during a trekking vacation in Nepal they had already planned.

Bhatta, a registered nurse and health care activist who now lives in Cave Junction with her husband, Michael Keown, spends part of each year in Nepal running health camps. After hearing Bhatta’s idea to build a permanent clinic, Wood also became passionate about the project.

“The 7,000 people who live in the immediate village of Bhotechaur have no medical care all year unless Aparna brings her clinic,” explains Wood, who added that a permanent clinic would serve at least 50,000 people in surrounding villages.

“The health care of the Nepali people has been Aparna’s work for the last 25 to 30 years, particularly for women,” Wood added.

Based on last year’s experience, Wood said this year’s three-day clinic will serve about 500 people a day. “Every child that comes through has worms,” she said. “Minor scrapes fester and become infected.”

One of the most common problems for Nepali women is a protracted uterus, a condition rarely seen in the United States, said Wood.

“It’s caused because women work so hard there, they have so many children and they don’t allow their body time to heal,” she added.

This year, Wood and Bhatta will institute a new concept at the clinic: crowd control.

“When 500 people line up, the men just elbow their way up front, pushing women and children out of the way,” explained Wood.

In addition to holding screaming babies, Wood plans to document the clinic with photos.

“I wanted to show everyone here who donated to this project how their money was spent,” she said.

Better health care wins out in Nepal
Wood convinces Maoists that new clinic should go forward

Travel: don’t stay home. That’s the advice world traveler Catherine Wood has for Americans contemplating making or canceling trips in the near future.

Wood returned to Grants Pass earlier this month after spending four weeks in Nepal on a humanitarian mission for the Rogue Gateway Rotary Club, which hopes to establish a permanent health clinic to serve 50,000 villagers.

While Wood’s mission was ultimately successful, and wheels are in motion to start building the clinic next spring, Wood was struck by the dire poverty millions of people endure in Third World countries.

“When I left here in September, tourism in Nepal was down 50 to 75 percent – which for me was nice, because it was easier to travel,” said Wood. “But the economic impact of Sept. 11 goes all the way down to the poorest people in the poorest village. They rely on tourists to buy what they make. Now, they are even more desperate than before.”

During her stay, Wood assisted Aparna Bhatta, a native Nepali who is a registered nurse and health care activist, hold a two-day clinic in Dukuchhap, a village southeast of Kathmandu. Bhatta, who lives part of each year with her husband, Michael Keown, in Cave Junction, has been running temporary health clinics in Nepal for years.

Before Wood left Oregon this fall, she had lined up a Eugene doctor and two nurses to staff the two-day clinic. The three had planned to trek in Nepal during that time, and were glad to help.

“The kids are undernourished and malnourished,” she said. “I met a boy who I thought was 7 or 8, but he was 13. He had just been living on white rice. Fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to come by.”

Just as Wood and the medical group were leaving the clinic, their medicine put away in suitcases and the clinic door locked, a woman who had been working in the rice fields approached with her baby. Almost comatose, the baby had pneumonia and a high fever, said Wood.

“The doctor said, ‘Wait a minute,’ opened his suitcase, and we just sat down on the concrete while he treated that baby,” she said. “When the woman walked away, her baby had color in his face, his eyes were open and clear. There’s no doubt in my mind that the doctor saved that baby.”

Most of Wood’s stay in Nepal was a roller coaster of uncertainty. Until her last few days there, Wood was thwarted in her original plan: to lay groundwork for establishing a permanent clinic in Bhotechaur, another village.

Soon after she arrived in Kathmandu, the nation’s capital, Wood was warned that Maoist insurgents from the country’s Western region had come to the village, killed several people and bombed the new police headquarters.

Two days before Wood was to leave Nepal, the mayor of Bhotechaur implored her to come see for herself that life was back to normal, and the Maoists no longer posed a threat. The next day, with trepidation, Wood and Bhatta set out early for the village.

“We grabbed a taxi at 6:30 a.m. for the hour-long drive, and then hot-footed it up the steep trail 7 miles to Bhotechaur, reaching the village at 10:30,” said Wood.

There, she and Bhatta met with about 10 members of the Village Development Committee – similar to a city council – and half a dozen or so locals who had been Maoists sympathizers. Most local Maoists couldn’t attend the meeting because the rice harvest was in full swing.

With Bhatta translating, Wood told the committee that Rotary would not proceed with the project unless there were assurances the Maoists would not pose any physical danger to persons involved in the project, would not demand money, would not cause any disruption or delay the project, and would not try to confiscate or damage property.

“The Maoists seemed embarrassed that any activities that may have occurred in the recent past had caused any delay in this project,” said Wood. “They and their families have health problems, too, and are very anxious to have our clinic project up and running.”

Wood and Bhatta got back to Kathmandu at about 5 p.m., then Wood met with the project’s engineer to firm up plans to retrofit an existing building. The next day, Wood left for home.

With rainy seasons in summer and winter, work will be intermittent. Realistically, Wood expects the clinic to open sometime in March of 2003.

Glad to be home, Wood told members of her Rotary club, “Once you travel out of the United States, you really appreciate what an incredible life we have here. We may have problems, but it’s no comparison to the hundreds of millions of people who live in such desperate conditions.”

Imagine giving an impoverished child the gift of an education while simultaneously triggering a vast cultural shift in Nepal, a country halfway around the world. Bright Futures Foundation is trying to do just that.

Nepal – the very word evokes Shangri-La, that remote, idyllic land where life approaches perfection. It is true that Nepal, astride the Himalayas between Tibet and India, has some of Earth’s most magnificent scenery, including mystical Mount Everest. But look deeper and you will see that Nepal is not Shangri-La.

Its immense scenic wealth belies Nepal’s dire condition, for it is among the poorest nations in the world. In an area half the size of Oregon, 25 million Nepalis struggle to survive on an average annual per capita income of just $210. A 73 percent illiteracy rate, a severe lack of skilled labor, poor health, and a backward agrarian economy characterize Nepalese society.

An ancient caste system, outlawed in 1963, is so deeply entrenched in the country’s collective psyche that it nonetheless continues to dictate social behavior. Women, conditioned to accept male supremacy and their lowly station in society, suffer the most and are often the victims of abuse. Public education is woefully inadequate. The government provides five years of schooling for children from age 6 to 11. But male favoritism and family chores keep most girls at home, leading to a female literacy rate that is less than half that of males.

During my first trip to Nepal, I met 10-year-old Samip, a bright boy who speaks a little English, likes ice cream and cauliflower, rabbits, and the color sky blue. He lives in a tiny two-room house in Kathmandu with his parents, Raju and Anita.

Nearing the end of his free public education, Samip’s future looked bleak. Impressed with Samip’s intelligence and enthusiasm for learning, I sought a way to give him an opportunity for a better education and hope for the future. But, sensitive to the plight of Nepali women and girls, I looked for a way to help them, too.

I discovered that in Kathmandu, private schooling costs about $1,500 per year, including tuition, room, board, uniforms and other supplies. This is far beyond the reach of most Nepali families. But by giving up just a few of my little luxuries, like weekly manicures and daily lattes, I figured I could pay for Samip’s schooling. I didn’t want this to be just a handout, though. I wanted an experience rich with meaning for both of us. So I drew up what I called a “moral contract” with Samip that we signed in a little ceremony at his home. This was a solemn moment for Samip, perhaps the most important of his life. His parents were deeply moved, and tears swam in Anita’s eyes as she grasped the importance of the contract. Essentially, in exchange for my promise to pay for Samip’s education through grade 12 at a private school in Kathmandu, Samip promises to work hard to get good grades; never to mistreat, beat or otherwise physically harm a girl or woman; and, when he has completed grade 12, to help a young Nepali girl get an education.

Samip has been going to his new school for two years now, and is doing well. His school progress reports are sent to me, and he writes a postcard to me every month.

In a country where boys are already favored, why help a young boy get an education? Because I believe that by requiring a boy to demonstrate respect for girls and women, and by requiring that he, in turn, help a Nepali girl get an education, a change in attitude will result, one boy at a time. A cultural shift is put in motion that attacks both the lack of adequate educational opportunity for all children and the plight of women and girls. The tax-exempt Bright Futures Foundation furthers these goals. Currently, donations to Bright Futures Foundation from our local community are helping more Nepali boys who have signed “moral contracts” and are now attending private school in Kathmandu.

Donations may be made in any amount, and donors may choose to sponsor a young girl’s education if they so desire. No administration expenses are deducted from donations, so 100 percent of every donation goes directly to help educate a child in Nepal.

We cannot solve all the world’s problems nor help everyone. But we can help a child in one of the world’s poorest nations, changing that child’s life forever. We can affect a monumental cultural shift that will benefit women and girls in a society that presently considers them without value. Won’t you please support this effort with a generous gift to Bright Futures Foundation? Like a pebble dropped into still water, your gift will ripple out for years to come, providing education and an opportunity for a bright future for young boys, girls and women in Nepal.

How a homegrown foundation gives children across the globe new hope for Bright Futures

Catherine Wood was restless. It was spring of 2000 and she had recently resigned as executive director of the United Way of Josephine County, where she had managed to triple donations in three years. Leading the United Way had tapped her considerable energy – and had also satisfied her altruistic impulses. Now what was she going to do?

The answer came at a Rotary meeting when a speaker asked if anyone in the club was willing to travel to Nepal to research the feasibility of Rotary support for a healthcare project. “I didn’t even think twice,” says Wood. “I knew instantly I wanted to go.”

What she didn’t know was that her Nepal journey was going to change her life. Actually, it was going to change many lives. But first, within the realm of expectation, the Rogue Gateway Rotary in Grants Pass adopted the healthcare project. The project also gained Rotary support at the regional and international levels, and the rural clinic is currently being renovated. Wood returns every fall to shepherd it along.

In the area of surprises, Wood, who lives in Murphy, is now the president of Bright Futures Foundation, an organization she established in 2002 to provide quality private education for impoverished Nepali children. “If they have a heart, most people who visit Nepal end up wanting to do something for the children,” explains Wood. “The need is so great. We have so much, and they have so little.”

Through the foundation, sponsors commit to supporting a child at $1,500 a year for room, board and tuition until the child completes grade 12. Supporters may also donate without making a long-term pledge.

Wood thought long and hard before she made her initial commitment in 2000 to a then 10-year-old boy named Samip. “I don’t have the kind of money where $1,500 a year is easy to part with,” says Wood. “I had to think about how I could sustain my commitment. What was I willing to give up so this child could have a shot at a better life?”

For Wood, the list was short: daily lattes, monthly facials and visits to the beauty shop. Her golden hair is growing long on behalf of an organization that uses donated tresses to make wigs for cancer patients, and the facials are but a pleasant memory. “I miss my lattes,” Wood admits, “but not when I think about what a huge difference it makes to Samip.”

The child’s family lives in a one-room apartment in Kathmandu, Nepal’s chaotic capitol city. The closet-sized kitchen has no running water, and numerous families share a common bathroom. The narrow street outside is strewn with trash and rotting garbage, and some neighborhood children are among the 35 percent of Nepali kids who don’t attend school at all. Samip – an intelligent, inquisitive child – had been enrolled in public school.

“Public schools in Nepal are not anything like what Americans think of as public education,” says Wood. “The kids are crammed elbow-to-elbow in classrooms that lack books and basic supplies. I visited one school where raw sewage drained into a ditch on the edge of the tiny strip of bare dirt they called a playground.”

Once children reach grade six, families must buy their children’s school supplies. In a country where the average annual income is $240,even a few cents for paper and pencils is too much. Samip’s education was going to be cut short. What would this boy do with the rest of his life? Wood couldn’t stand the thought, and she decided to take responsibility for his education.

“But I didn’t’ just want to give him a handout,” insists Wood. “I wanted him to have accountability.” So Wood, a former attorney, drew up a “moral contract” with Samip. In exchange for her promise to finance his education, Samip pledged to work hard to get good grades, never to mistreat or physically harm a girl or woman (violence against women is rampant in Nepal), and, upon completion of grade 12, to help a young Nepali girl get an education.

Back in the U.S., Wood’s story elicited positive response, so she recruited a board of directors and filed papers with the IRS to establish a 501(c)(3) organization, paving the way for others to sponsor Nepali children. So far, sponsors have committed to educating eight children, who have in turn signed the “moral contract.” “We can’t solve all the world’s problems,” says Wood. “But, like a pebble dropped into still water, our efforts will ripple through human lives for years to come.”

The foundation’s name sprang from a long-distance conversation between Wood and Samip. “He was so excited telling me about life in his school,” says Wood. “He said, ‘Oh didi (big sister), because of you my future is so bright!’”

Community
Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Local event slated to help clinic in Nepal
More than 2,300 treated in facility's first six months

by Susan Goracke
of the Daily Courier

The public is invited to celebrate "Hot Nepali Nights" Monday evening, outdoors on the decks of the Galice Resort with members of Grants Pass-based Bright Futures Foundation.

The event begins at 6 p.m. and will include wine tasting, a silent auction, a buffet dinner beginning at 7 and dancing to the music of Broadway Phil and the Shouters until 9.

It's all designed to raise money for the operation of a village health clinic in far-away Nepal.

Tickets to Monday's event cost $25 per person, with 100 percent of that admission price directly benefiting the Bhotechaur Health Clinic, thanks to "the generosity of local sponsors," said Catherine Wood, Bright Futures founder and president.

The clinic, which opened in December, serves 50,000 people in remote mountain villages near Nepal's capital of Kathmandu.

Wood helped spearhead the project -- to renovate an existing but deteriorating concrete block building and turn it into a health clinic -- after traveling to Nepal in 2000 to determine the project's feasibility.

Along with members of her Rogue Gateway Rotary Club of Grants Pass, Wood helped raise $12,500. That amount was matched by regional clubs, then by Rotary International to total $50,000.

During several trips to Nepal, Wood forged a partnership with the Rotary Cub of Kathmandu and worked with a Nepali engineer. One trip, in October 2001, was canceled due to a Maoist insurrection in Bhotechaur and surrounding villages.

Now that the clinic is open, Bright Futures Foundation has assumed responsibility for funding its annual operating budget of $10,000.

Wood noted that 60 percent of the more than 2,300 patients treated during the clinic's first six months were women, who she described as "largely over-worked, under-nourished and overlooked." "The major ailments treated are the ones you would expect to find in a crowded, poverty-stricken rural area where water is contaminated and cooking is done indoors in wood stoves," Wood added.

Close to 50 silent auction items will be offered, ranging from jewelry, gifts and massages by local therapists to Nepali, Indian and Thai dinners, jetboat and rafting trips on the Rogue River.

Featured during Monday night's wine tasting will be a demonstration of Nepali dancing by Aparna Bhatta, a native of Nepal who now lives in Grants Pass. One of Bright Futures' board members, Bhatta sparked Wood's interest in building the clinic when she spoke at a Rotary luncheon in 2000.

Other local board members include Tommi Drake, Jill Gleysteen, Jennifer Hillis, Linda Lemmens and Teddy Shepard.

"It will be a whole different atmosphere for us, and we're looking forward to it," said Galice Resort owner Debbie Thomason, noting that some of Bright Futures board members will be wearing colorful saris from Nepal.