Ten years after being named the 2015 CNN Hero of the Year, Maggie Doyne has transformed what began with a plot of land purchased with her babysitting money into a global model for poverty alleviation in rural Nepal through her BlinkNow Foundation. The 38-year-old started her mission after high school when she met a young girl in Surkhet whose life was devastated during Nepal’s decades-long civil conflict, and today she cares for 93 children while addressing their immediate needs and supporting them toward long-term growth and self-sufficiency. Her Kopila Valley School, which started as a small bamboo shack, has now served 1,000 students with state-of-the-art facilities, modern technology, gardening and farming classes, healthy meals to combat malnutrition, onsite daycare, and a job readiness program that launches students toward college and careers. The children she raised are now out in the world as architects, engineers, social workers, teachers, and entrepreneurs, proving that her community vision for care truly works.
Doyne’s journey over the last decade has included both enormous achievements and profound heartache, including the tragic loss of her son Ravi to accidental drowning in 2015, a trauma that made progress seem impossible for years. While healing as a family, she met filmmaker Jeremy Power Regimbal at a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, and the two began working together professionally before eventually marrying and raising their biological children in Nepal alongside their 93 siblings. The organization now includes a four-story Children’s Village, a separate home for at-risk girls who have been victims of trauma and human trafficking, a food and farming program training Indigenous women, a full-service medical clinic, and a team of 175 caregivers and professionals. Doyne’s message remains the same as when she started two decades ago: anyone can make a difference, small acts can have big impacts, and we should all keep showing up with acts of kindness wherever we are because it all matters.
