A 2008 trip to India changed Kathy Bollerud’s life in ways she never could have imagined.
“My husband and I visited all these rural villages in the Himalayas, and we saw the children, and I just could not get it out of my head,” Bollerud said. “I kept telling people, I am meant to do something to help these children. A vacation became my vocation.”
Bollerud, chair of the board of the Himalayan Education Foundation, will tell her story, “Accidental Humanitarian: 15 Years in a Himalayan Village,” at Jaffrey Civic Center’s “Stories to Share” event on Friday, Nov. 7. The talk will be followed by a reception. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
To register or for more information, go to https://jaffreyciviccenter.com/stories/.
Shortly after Bollerud returned from that first trip to India, she met Jay Hardikar, a longtime Peterborough resident who had founded the HEF after his own trip to the northeasternmost part of India, bordering Nepal and Tibet.
On his trip, Hardikar, who grew up in India, visited the village of Chaukori and learned that most families in the region could not afford the local school fees of $15 a month. Hardikar also learned that very few girls received any education at all.
The founders of the HEF decided to fund a school, provide education to girls through high school, and provide scholarships for anyone who wanted to attend.
“Jay knew the family who ran the school that was already there; it was an English-speaking school,” Bollerud said. “The philosophy behind the school was if rural children get a good education, they could do as well as anyone else in the world.”
In 2010, the HEF opened a high school for the girls of the region.
“At the time, there was no high school for girls at all in that region. We decided to provide a scholarship for girls, and now we have 200 kids on scholarship,” Bollerud said. “Many of them go on to college.”
In 2013, Bollerud founded Himalayan NARI, a craft collective of the mothers of children who came to Chaukori to enable their children to attend the school. The collective sells knitted items handmade by the women of Chaukori at local shops, including Alice Blue, the Harrisville Store, and the Hancock Store and at local craft fairs.
Bollerud, a Harrisville resident, is a retired psychologist with a doctorate in counseling and consulting psychology from Harvard University. She was a teaching fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Medical School and a recipient of the Cleveland International Fellowship from Stockholm, Sweden and the Newcombe Fellowship for advancing scholarship in ethics.
Over the past 18 years, Bollerud has made 10 trips to Chaukori.
“It takes four days to get there from Harrisville,” Bollerud said. “First we have to get to Newark, then fly to Delhi, then the next day, you take a day in Delhi to rest up. Then the next day, you take a train for six hours, then you drive for three hours, and then the last day, you drive another five or six hours.”
Bollerud said that thanks to the generosity of supporters, the HEF is thriving, despite recent cutbacks to foreign aid.
“Fortunately, we had never taken any government money,” she said. “We now have 200 families who depend on us for scholarships, and we employ 150 people. We are grateful to our many supporters in the Monadnock region have been extremely helpful to us as sponsors, in supporting scholarships, and in volunteering for NARI at local craft fairs. Thanks to all the support we receive, we are really a success.”
For more information about the Himalayan Education Foundation and NARI go to himalayaneducation.org./