By Eric Roache, Founder & Chairman
We are thrilled to announce that we are now officially recognized by the IRS as a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. What this means to us is that the long journey of organizing is almost complete, and now we can turn our attention 100% to the job of fulfilling our mission. A lot of changes will be coming in the next few weeks and months as we move into the next phase of our journey as an organization, but I want to take the opportunity of this milestone to reflect back on the past year briefly.
One year ago, ForWorld Thinking was just pages of notes written feverishly in the foothills of Nepal. I would spend free mornings and evenings kneeling on the cement of my barren guesthouse room with my notebook set on the edge of the bed, huddled in my north face jacket and winter hat against the bitter cold. There I would write and rewrite plans, ideas, mission statements, trying to organize all the thoughts in my mind. Then in the day I would meet up with Himal and we would set about doing the work of setting up his orphanage, Joining Hands Nepal. After a month, we moved into the house that would become a home for Joining Hands Nepal. After another month, the children arrived and we set about the work of building a family. The next two months flew by as Himal and I cared for the children and taught daily English classes in the morning and evening, and Himal attended to business outside the house during the day while the children were at school and I kept fine-tuning my vision of the organization that was to become ForWorld Thinking. They had their first international volunteer just before I left Nepal at the start of summer, and our joint vision was complete.
The biggest thing I took away from those 4 months in Nepal to start 2011 was the thing that solidified our mission: passion to create change exists everywhere. We do not need to try and make change everywhere around the world, we simply need to find the passion that exists in people everywhere and encourage it, support it, and invest in it. I cannot expect to go into Nepal, or any country, fully understand the complexities of the social problems, and come up with solutions to solve them. What I can do is seek out a local community member who innately understands the problems, has the passion and knowledge to come up with solutions, and give them my trust and support. And I can give them a forum to educate people around the globe about what the problem is, what the solution is, and how outside supporters can best help. You see, just like every major change in an individual has to come from within him or herself to be sustainable, every major social change in a community has to come from within itself to be sustainable. This is a huge issue that I will come back to again next week in another post.
For now, what is important is that this realization was demonstrated with beauty and grace by my good friend and partner in change, Himal, as I watched him build a family with those children in such a short time. And now, 1 year after we moved into that house together in Panauti, ForWorld Thinking has received the blessing of the federal government to work for the public good and build a global community which includes Joining Hands Nepal and all of you supporting us. We look forward to that community growing bigger and stronger every year.
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