The Community Library in Ketchum has a busy schedule of June activities. The first event will take a tour to the exotic locales of central Asia.
"Journey to the Himalayas: A Story of Friendship, Culture and Philanthropy," will be presented 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 6, by Wood River Valley native Trevor Patzer, co-founder of the Little Sisters Fund, and Usha Acharya, author and wife of a former Nepalese ambassador to the United Nations.
The colleagues will share their experiences in Nepal and Bhutan, with an emphasis on the current political situations there and The Little Sisters Fund, a non-profit organization committed to the education of underprivileged girls in Nepal. Acharya, who lives in Washington, D.C., is coming to the valley just for the event. There will be an accompanying slide show of Patzer's photographs and a question-and-answer period.
"This is going to be fantastic," Community Library Executive Director Colleen Daly said. "They couldn't be more wonderful. We were interested in having them talk about the culture of those countries because they have great insider information that's not readily available to tourists."
Patzer founded Little Sisters in 1998, inspired by a visit to Nepal. He had met Acharya in New York City a few years earlier while doing research on mediation while in college. It was during a later visit with her in Nepal that he realized his dream of giving back the gift of education.
As the recipient of the gift himself, Patzer had long vowed he wanted to do the same for someone else. His benefactor was the late Ric Ohrstrom, a part-time Sun Valley resident, who was "heavily involved in the Sun Valley Center for the Arts," Patzer said.
"When I was 10 or 11, he said if I got into St. Paul's School, he'd pay my way. He gave me the gift of education. It's the idea that if you give a person a fish he eats for the day, if you teach him to fish he eats for life."
After several years of working in education-related fields, he said, "I promised myself I'd go on one trip a year to somewhere new."
"When I went to Nepal, I stayed with Usha's family. In my opinion and many people's, Usha is the world's expert on the rights of women and girls in Asia with an emphasis on education. I saw the state of education there and the need. I asked how much it would cost to educate one child and asked if there was a child I could help. She said, 'There's a girl.' That's when I met Bindhaya, who was 11 at the time. She looked up at me with her big brown eyes and my heart melted. I told her I'd pay for the rest of her education. She is now in her final year of nursing school. She's the original little sister."
Devoting himself to the idea of educating was not a new concept for Patzer. He is the son of Midge Patzer, a popular teacher at Wood River High School and author of "Teenagers: Unlocking Personal Power," who retired Friday after 34 years.
"The first person to step up to the plate for the Little Sister Fund was Allen (Sis) Ohrstrom, the widow of Ric Ohrstrom," Patzer said. "The first year we had Bindhaya, the second we had 17 girls. Today we are putting 430 girls through school—30 of whom are in Bhutan. We plan on growing substantially. We provide only long-term scholarships and accept six- to nine-year olds, for 6, 8, or 10 years. It's a three-legged agreement between Little Sister, the girl and her family and the schools. We have agreements with schools throughout Nepal."
Former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan once said, "We know that there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls and the employment of women."
The concept is something Patzer holds dear to his mission.
"The punch line to all of this is that in Asia everyone knows women are second-class citizens," he said. "In Nepal, a girl who is not in school is susceptible to child labor, child marriage and child trafficking. It's the cultural thing. That's the way it works. Boys get all a family's resources. Nepal is the largest trafficker of girls per capita for the international sex trade. Something like 20,000-30,000 young girls are trafficked each year out of Nepal."
Little Sister not only educates girls, but also keeps them safe.
Jichu Drakey in Bhutan.
Photos by Trevor Patzer
