We're also both artists with decades of professional creative experience between us.
We're going to Nepal...
...to bring aid to one of the poorest countries in the world, where four out of five rural women go without healthcare, and where "birth trauma" and "low birth weight" are in the top 10 most common causes of death, with "maternal conditions" coming in at #13.
We have an extraordinary opportunity: in our final quarter before graduation, we'll be traveling to Nepal to support two different organizations-- a women's clinic in the Annapurna region that provides critical, low-cost care to postnatal women with prolapsed uteruses (an ostracizing but easily correctable condition that is especially common in Nepali women), and a village clinic in the Khumbu region that provides healthcare for the residents of the sister Sherpa villages Khumjung and Kunde. Additionally, we'll be working with a residential program in Kathmandu, where young girls with injuries, illnesses, and physical disabilities are taken from dangerous circumstances (most living with their mothers in filthy city prisons). The girls are given shelter, healthcare, food, and education, while being taught vital life skills like handiwork, computers, martial arts and self defense, until their families are able to support them again. In addititon to our service, we will deliver critical medical supplies and educational materials to these organizations.
After we've returned, and to continue raising money for these excellent organizations, we'll be documenting the state of healthcare, motherhood, and the family in rural Nepal through audio recordings, portrait photography, and storytelling. When we come home, we'll host a mixed-media exhibit at a public art venue in our city (we've already been granted the space!), where we'll sell prints and greeting cards (professionally printed at a local printing press) featuring our photographs to continue raising money for the clinics and residential program.
AND-- thanks to our first indiegogo campaign, one lovely fundraising event, two Gilman Scholarships between us, and student loans, we've already raised enough money for our entire trip and all of the medical supplies we can carry!
AND BY THE TIME YOU'RE READING THIS, OUR JOURNEY HAS BEGUN!
So where will your money go?
We hope to raise a little bit more money to hire local translators and guides-- we'll be traveling through pretty remote areas where much of the economy is supported by tourists and hikers, and it seems appropriate that we contribute in this small way to the incomes of those whose country we're visiting. We estimate that this will cost an additional $500 more than we have already raised.
After that, all funds raised (and received by Feb. 24) will go directly to one of the organizations that I've mentioned above-- the Women's Clinic in Pokhara, the Parizat Nestling Home, or Kunde Hospital. We are also visiting an organization called the Himalayan Children Care and Environment Conservation Program. If they're as awesome as they sound, we're going to give them a donation as well. If you'd like your donation to go to one of these organizations specifically, just tell us and we'll make it so!
Donations received will help these organizations purchase sterile gauze, clinical-grade scissors and scalpels, bulb syringes, speculums, fetoscopes, stethoscopes, nitrile exam gloves, suturing kits, topical analgesic, topical disinfectants, and other critical medical supplies.
IF WE GO OVER OUR GOAL:
Well, here's where it gets exciting!
Other Ways You Can Help
If you can't contribute financially at this time, but we've inspired you with our grand project scheme, please pass word along to your friends about this campaign!
Thank you guys so much. We are so inspired by this project and so hopeful that we'll be able to pull together to make it work!
But seriously, did you see this? Best perk of the century, straight up. ----->
