A life dedicated to ending slavery
Olga Murray founded the Nepal Youth Foundation in 1990 to help impoverished children in Nepal and free young girls from effective slavery. Over the decades, Olga has helped hundreds of thousands of children and raised millions for new schools, nutritional centres and feeding clinics. Her work is globally recognised. Even Oprah Winfrey made a tv show about her!
Born in 1925 in Transylvania, Olga moved with her family to the U.S. when she was six years old. After graduation from Columbia University, she earned a law degree from George Washington University, where she was one of a handful of female students. She worked her way through law school as a researcher and writer for famed columnist Drew Pearson. With her law degree in hand, she found that few law firms would hire a woman.
Olga then knocked on the door of the California Supreme Court where she became a research attorney for Chief Justice Phil Gibson. When he retired, she joined the law staff of the newly appointed Justice Stanley Mosk. During her 37-year tenure at the Court, Olga helped take important decisions in the areas of civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental policy. She retired from the law in 1992 to devote herself completely to the cause of the Nepal Youth Foundation: to provide impoverished children with every child’s birth right: vital healthcare, education and a safe environment.
In the decades that the NYF have been working with children in Nepal, it has expanded not only the number of children supported at any given time –now well over 50,000-, but also in the ways in which they help them. Fundamental to the expansion and reach of the NYF was the launch of a UK branch of the NYF in 2013, founded by husband and wife Simon Russell and Gina Parker, as a result of many years of collaboration between the first charity they founded, Children of the Himalayas, and the Nepal Youth Foundation. By now NYF has grown into a global organisation with its Head Office in California, its Operations office in Katmandu and three further offices worldwide.
From providing the health of children throughout Nepal to enabling girls to receive equal treatment and education, each programme of the NYF is built emphasizing education and the development of personal and social responsibility in the children it supports.
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