For over 30 years, the Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF) has been providing children in Nepal with what is every child's birthright: vital healthcare, education, and a safe environment. With holistic programs developed, led, and implemented by Nepali citizens on the ground in the communities we serve, NYF has supported over 60,000 children and families in Nepal.
NYF's work is unique in so many ways—and our long-term, committed approach could inspire many more organizations doing similar work in other countries. That's why we're calling on President Biden and Vice President Harris to spotlight our work by bestowing our Founder, Olga Murray, the high honor of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honor in the United States. We hope that by bestowing this much-deserved honor on our Founder, Olga Murray, President Biden will draw valuable attention to NYF, which will allow us to expand our work more effectively and help inspire other organizations doing similar work. And by letting Vice President Harris know about Olga's incredible story, we hope that she will recommend Olga to President Biden as a candidate.
If you agree that Olga deserves this prestigious award and want to support the expansion of NYF's work, will you add your name to this petition in support of Olga's nomination?
I am writing today to join 2014 honoree Isabel Allende in urging you to consider a remarkable woman, 96-year-old Olga Murray, for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Olga is the founder of the Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), an innovative US-based nonprofit that matches funding from donors in the United States with transformative programs serving children in Nepal—all of them designed, implemented, and run by Nepali experts determined to help new generations build a better future.
She has made "an especially meritorious contribution to… world peace," cultural progress, human rights, women's rights, education, pediatric health, and more.
Olga and her organization are well-known in Nepal, and even a bit beyond. A Nepali newspaper once referred to her as "the Mother Teresa of Nepal," and in 2001, the Dalai Lama honored her with the Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award. But her story, and the innovative way her organization works, are relatively unknown in the United States.
NYF has directly served an estimated 60,000 children and young adults since it was founded in 1990, and the work Olga has done has built healthcare capacity throughout Nepal, improved educational opportunities, abolished a practice of childhood slavery, kept hundreds of families together during times of national upheaval, raised hundreds of children without parents in safe, family-style homes, empowered thousands of rural mothers to nourish their children with readily-accessible foods, trained hundreds of young adults in construction skills following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, and much, much more.
Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom would shine a national spotlight on the work Olga and her organization are still doing today. Other NGOs working to empower children throughout the world could learn a great deal from all Olga has done.
During this time of uncertainty, war, and anxiety, Olga Murray—a woman who has devoted her life to raising a healthy, educated, empowered generation of children in Nepal—is a wonderful example for all Americans of "especially meritorious contributions." I hope you will agree.
Thank you for your consideration.
