march 2024 newsletter

In the spring of 1998, a much younger version of me went to Nepal for the first time and had my life changed forever when the headmaster of a rural school made a humble request that would forever change my life: “Perhaps, Sir, you will someday come back with books.”

Over the years, I have eagerly anticipated every return visit to Nepal. This excitement was dialed up for my most recent trip because, after a year of planning, U-Go Nepal had launched as our 8th country of operation. And in a “life comes full circle” moment, my hosts would be the original brain trust behind Room to Read Nepal: co-founder Dinesh Shrestha, his wife Shobha plus several former employees and alumni who had eagerly joined our new mission of helping ambitious and promising young women to attend university.

Our first cohort of U-Go Nepal scholars numbers 104, and I had the pleasure of meeting 21 of them over two days in both rural Dhading Province and in Kathmandu. Talk about resilience - these young women have had so many obstacles thrown into their paths. Several lost their mothers due to health issues. One has an alcoholic and abusive father. One lost her entire family when a flash flood hit their mountain village. One reported that her brother tried to steal her scholarship money. Several are from lower castes in a place where this pernicious system has not yet been eliminated. The list of hardships goes on.

But every one of them has this spark, this energy, this passion for building a better life. Though only 6 months into their university studies, one can already observe a certain self-confidence emerging as they talk about the day they graduate and can become engineers, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, teachers and nurses.

*Meeting with two former beneficiaries of Room to Read Nepal, now volunteering, traveling to remote villages to promote U-Go’s scholarship program.*

The absolute best part was meeting two young women who finished secondary school with Room to Read support and are now volunteering for U-Go. This involves hours-long journeys to remote villages to evangelize for the U-Go program. Other than us covering their bus fare or flights to remote villages, they ask for nothing in return, telling me, “Sir, it’s an honor for us to pay back what we have been given.”

In a nation that faces all kinds of challenges, I left Nepal with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I am also overwhelmed with gratitude to our seed funders for Nepal: an anonymous foundation in London; my old Microsoft mates Tim Wood and Bruce Jacobson; and four Colorado friends Katie and Mike Solondz and Christy and Jay Orris.

We now want to triple the program from 104 scholars to 300 by EOY 2024. If you’d like to help us to make this next big leap, to change a life of hardship to one of hope for another cohort of Nepalese young women, please let me know. Like the thousands of young women educated thanks to that first humble request for books, I leave you with the vision of the ripple effect: every U-Go scholar who will make a better life for herself, her family and her community thanks to your support.

With gratitude,

John Wood

Founder & CEO

Scholar Spotlight

Meet Shimpi Yadav. The elders in Shimpi’s community warn her parents against letting her leave the village to participate in a girls’ leadership program. How could they allow their daughter to travel alone by air plane to a distant place? How could they grant her this freedom?

Girls of this caste level are told they are only meant for a life of early marriage and babies, barred from reaching any level of education. But Shimpi eyes a different future for herself.

“Nobody can get me down. I have big dreams,” she says. Today, she is indeed writing a new and promising story for herself. Hear in her own words how she is changing the landscape for young women in India, particularly from lower castes, to chase their dreams of a university education and beyond.

Thank you to the Milaan Foundation who partnered with U-Go to capture the inspiring story of Shimpi. For more inspiring stories, visit U-Go’s Youtube page or click the links below.