![\"Maggie](\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Maggie_Doyne.jpg\")
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Other children came. The word spread through the Surkhet district that there was a home where children could be safe, fed, and educated. Maggie Doyne became a legal guardian, then a mother – eventually adopting several children as her own.<\/p>\n
She also became a Nepali citizen.<\/p>\n
She called home regularly. Her parents helped fundraise in New Jersey. Word spread in the United States. Small donations arrived. Then larger ones. She used every dollar directly – no administrative layer between the money and the children.<\/p>\n
By 2010, the home had grown enough that she needed a school. The Kopila Valley School opened – not a temporary structure but a permanent, eco-friendly campus designed to serve the whole community. Teachers were hired. Curriculum was developed. Children who had been breaking stones in riverbeds were now studying mathematics and science.<\/p>\n
The school grew to approximately 400 students.<\/p>\n
In 2015, CNN named Maggie Doyne its Hero of the Year – the highest honor in the network\u2019s annual recognition of extraordinary humanitarians. She received $1 million in prize money from Travelers and other sponsors.<\/p>\n
She donated it all to the BlinkNow Foundation to fund the school\u2019s expansion.<\/p>\n
The BlinkNow Foundation now runs the Kopila Valley Children\u2019s Home – where more than 50 children live permanently – the Kopila Valley School with 400 students, a women\u2019s center providing skills training and microloans, and a health clinic serving the surrounding community.<\/p>\n
Hima – the girl in the riverbed – went to school. She graduated. She went to university.<\/p>\n
She became a teacher.<\/p>\n
She came back to teach at Kopila Valley School – the school that was built with babysitting money, on land bought by a 19-year-old from New Jersey who watched children break stones and decided she had enough to do something about it.<\/p>\n
Maggie Doyne still lives in Surkhet, Nepal. She is in her late 30s. The BlinkNow Foundation is still operating and expanding.<\/p>\n
She never went back to New Jersey to finish the life she had planned.<\/p>\n
She has said she doesn\u2019t think about it as a sacrifice. She thinks about it as the life she found instead of the one she was supposed to live.<\/p>\n
Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the most important decision of a person\u2019s life is sometimes made at a dry riverbed in Nepal with $5,000 in their pocket and no plan except to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Other children came. The word spread through the Surkhet district that there was a home where children could be safe, fed, and educated. Maggie Doyne became a legal guardian, then a mother – eventually adopting several children as her own. She also became a Nepali citizen. She called home regularly. Her parents helped fundraise in … <\/p>\n