Appearing at Church of the Redeemer | 3:40 pm – 4:30 pm
About the author
Maggie Doyne is co-founder of the BlinkNow Foundation and Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School in Surkhet, Nepal. At age 19, she used her babysitting money and worked with the local community to build a home for orphaned children in war-torn Nepal. In 2010, she and her team opened a school for 500 of the region’s most impoverished children, and since then, BlinkNow and Kopila have worked to deepen and grow the organization through grassroots community development efforts. In 2015, Doyne was named CNN Hero of the Year. She believes that poverty, hunger, and violence will be alleviated when children are provided with their most basic needs and human rights—a loving, happy childhood, nutrition, and a quality education. She believes that this can be achieved during her lifetime.
MFOB featured book: Between the Mountain and the Sky
Between the Mountain and the Sky shows us the goodness that is possible when a single person—regardless of age—takes action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of hundreds. It is a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, and the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way.
Doyne’s story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to travel the world during a gap year before starting college. Her life’s trajectory alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Doyne decides to invest her life savings of $5,000 to buy a piece of land and open a children’s home in Nepal—Kopila Valley Children’s Home. The BlinkNow Foundation she founded started the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than 500 students. Doyne’s inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.
