Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope

Between the Mountain and the Sky turns a hopeful lens on the world and shows us what can happen when a single person takes a decisive action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of hundreds--including her own.

Maggie's story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to take a gap year before starting college. During her travels, the trajectory of her life alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Maggie decides to invest her life savings of five thousand dollars to buy a piece of land and open a children's home in Nepal.

That home becomes Kopila Valley Children's Home, and eventually, the nonprofit Maggie launches, the BlinkNow Foundation, also starts the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than four hundred students. Maggie and BlinkNow's work have been recognized around the world for their innovative, sustainable work.

However, this book isn't a how-to for fledging philanthropists or nonprofit founders--it's a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, as well as the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way. And Maggie's inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.

ISBN-13: 9780785240433

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Harper Horizon

Publication Date: 02-14-2023

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

Maggie Doyne is cofounder of the BlinkNow Foundation and Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School in Surkhet, Nepal. At age nineteen, she used her babysitting money and worked with the local community to build a home for orphaned children in war-torn Nepal. In 2010, she and her team opened a school for five hundred of the region’s most impoverished children. Throughout the past decade, BlinkNow and Kopila have worked to deepen and grow the organization through grassroots community development efforts.Her work has been championed by Pulitzer Prize—winning columnist Nicholas Kristof and the Dalai Lama, among others. The story of BlinkNow’s beginnings has been featured on the Huffington Post, VH1, MTV, and DoSomething.org. Maggie was named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year and was used as an example for her groundbreaking work at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. In 2015, she was named CNN Hero of the Year.Maggie’s story carries a message of hope, love, and the possibility of how the smallest individual acts can spark huge world change. She believes that poverty, hunger, and violence will be alleviated when children are provided with their most basic needs and human rights—a loving, happy childhood, nutrition, and a quality education. She believes that this can be achieved during her lifetime.

Table of Contents

Dear Reader vii

Prologue: Sunrise ix

1 Rock-Breaking Girl 1

2 Brick by Brick 14

3 In the Blink of an Eye 27

4 Homecoming 40

5 Moonstar 54

6 Kites in the Sky 71

7 Sisters 83

8 Little Wing 93

9 Boksi 101

10 The Tiniest Bud 114

11 White Light 129

12 Dead Plants 141

13 One Brave Thing 154

14 Love Letters 165

15 The New Land 177

16 A Long Shadow 190

17 Ruby Sunshine 208

18 Dear Children 220

Epilogue: Satsung 231

Acknowledgments 235

About BlinkNow 243

BlinkNow Timeline 249

About the Authors 255