Marching in Nepal

By Olga Murray

I was a law clerk at the California Supreme Court for 37 years - working for Chief Justice Phil Gibson from 1955 to 1964, and then for Justice Stanley Mosk. My years at the court truly were fulfilling, giving me the opportunity to work with some of the most interesting and brilliant legal minds in the state, both judges and lawyers.

When I was approaching 60, I began to realize that I would eventually leave my job to retire. I wondered what I could do that would be as gratifying as being a lawyer. I always knew that I wanted to work with underprivileged children - maybe teaching at a community center, or advocating for children in juvenile court.

I also had always been addicted to travel. In 1984 I went to Asia for the first time. When I arrived in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, I felt an instant rapport with the people. Though incredibly poor, they were very friendly, and seemingly content with the little they had. I then went trekking into the mountains and met children who were living in dire poverty, dressed in rags and mostly malnourished - but the happiest kids I had ever seen. At that time, most Nepalese children did not go to school, yet most I met wanted an education.

While there, I had an epiphany: This is what I will do with the rest of my life - work to educate children in Nepal. I began by giving scholarships to college in Nepal to five boys who were leaving an orphanage at the age of 16 with nothing - no family or prospects of any kind. Later, as the need for more scholarships grew, I found sponsors among my friends for other students. I soon realized that I wanted to do more. So in 1990, when I was 65, my friends and I founded the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF), a nonprofit organization of which I am president.

Our nonprofit currently supports 4,000 students, from kindergartners to medical students. NYOF eventually expanded beyond scholarships. We discovered that children were dying at home in their villages because even though they were cured of infection and disease, they were being discharged from the hospital when they were still severely malnourished. So we opened a small hospital in Kathmandu dedicated entirely to rehabilitating very malnourished children and educating their mothers about child care.

At the urging of the Nepali government, we now have nine such facilities throughout the country to aid starving children. We also operate two small, excellent homes for destitute children.

In 2000, NYOF began a program to free little Nepalese girls (some as young as six or seven years old) from bonded labor. They were "sold" by their parents to work as servants far from home. The practice was customary to a very poor ethnic group in five districts of western Nepal. We estimated that about 20,000 young girls were the victims of this appalling practice.

Our staff in Nepal came up with the idea of giving each family a piglet or a goat if they would bring a daughter home from her labors, or simply not sell her services at all. The families can then sell the animal at the end of the year for roughly the same amount they would've received for their daughter's labor. Our foundation places these girls in school and pays for their education through high school. We also initiated a community-awareness campaign to help stop the inhumane practice of bonded labor.

In 2000 we liberated 32 girls, and by 2008 the number had increased to 4,000. Today, the practice has been virtually eliminated in one district.

So, in January 2008, 54 years after I was sworn into the State Bar, I was proudly marching in a remote village in Nepal with about 2,400 girls, all formerly indentured child laborers. We marched through the main town of the district, giving onlookers and shopkeepers leaflets opposing the practice of bonding girls to work as servants. The liberated girls, dressed in their school uniforms, chanted fervently in their Tharu dialect: "End the bonding practice! Send your daughters to school!" While marching, I happily added my own chant: "You go, girl!"

Olga Murray is the founder and president of Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (www.nyof.org). She spends half of each year in Sausalito and the other half in Kathmandu.

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