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Climbing to new heights to help underprivileged girls
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7/23/2008 4:09 p.m.
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"There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls and the empowerment of women."
– Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations
Would you climb a 21,000-foot mountain to show your support for this statement? Horizon Air Q400 Captain Phil Wiltse did.
He was part of a group of seven climbers that summited Nepal's Mera Peak in May to raise money for the Little Sisters Fund, a scholarship fund for underprivileged girls in Nepal. The fund provides financial aid for the girls to attend schools that they typically would not have access to.
"In Nepal, girls are at a big disadvantage if they're not in school," Wiltse says. "They're at supreme risk for trafficking, child labor and arranged marriages. They can be shipped across the border into India and put into brothels – some as young as seven years old. Putting them in schools and educating them reduces those risks."
In this country between China and India, the education of females is considered secondary to that of males.
"When the biggest issue your family faces is what you're going to eat that day, putting your children in school isn't first on the list of priorities," Wiltse says. "But educating females is vital for breaking the cycle of poverty. The circle of influence of a female is so much wider than a male's. If you educate a boy, you educate one person, but if you educate a girl, you educate her family and the next generation."
That's why the United Nations established the education and empowerment of women as one of its Millennium Project goals, and the Little Sisters Fund is playing a role in meeting that goal.
"There's a profound effect," Wiltse says. "For example, uneducated females have an average of 7.5 children, and educated females will have half that many. That's huge in a population of extreme poverty."
Since the Little Sisters Fund was founded in 1998, the organization has helped more than 800 Nepalese girls receive educations. And that number is going to grow, thanks to the fundraising spearheaded by Wiltse and Trevor Patzer, the organization's founder. The two of them, along with their five fellow climbers, raised $125,000 (including donations from a number of Horizon co-workers) for the fund, then climbed Mera Peak to raise awareness for their organization. The trek took about a month, with the group reaching the summit on May 18.
It costs about $2,500 for a private school education equivalent to the U.S.'s first through 12th grades and about half that for a girl attending a public school, so the $125,000 will go a long way.
Wiltse first got involved with the Little Sisters Fund more than five years ago by mere chance. When a flight to Los Angeles encountered severe turbulence, a flight attendant was injured. As medical personnel were attending to her after the flight landed, she explained to Wiltse that a passenger had helped her, and she handed him Patzer's business card. Wiltse subsequently researched Patzer's organization.
"As a father of a daughter who was about six at the time, it definitely made an impact on me," says Wiltse, who acknowledges that it can be a tough sell to convince people to donate money to help others on the other side of the world.
"You can choose to help in any way that you can, whether it's here or anywhere else," he says. "But it's important to remember that there's a big difference between what we struggle with in this country, and what half the world struggles with, living on less than $2 per day. Most people in America aren't concerned with whether they're going to make it through the day, but many people in other countries do worry about that. If we can do something to provide assistance to them, to show compassion, that can make a big difference in their lives."
For more information, visit littlesistersfund.org.
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