ManufactuRed Housing - The Taft School

Connecting the DotsBefore heading to college, classmatesDan Furman, Willy Oppenheim andNick Smith ’04 took a year “on” andwent to India for three months.“We returned home with a raisedawareness of how little it takes to changesomeone’s world,” says Willy, “and howmuch material wealth surrounds us.”As volunteer English teachers ata small school in Dharamsala, theylearned the power of “connecting thedots.” The school was a hub of differentcommunity-service projects, all drivenby volunteers from India, Tibet, Europeand the U.S. Traveling to other parts ofIndia, they came across innumerableprojects they also wanted to support.“On our last day, we metOmprakash, an old gentleman who suffereda severe stroke 30 years earlier andnow lived at the Mother Teresa Homefor the Dying and Destitute in Delhi,where six nuns care for 300 physicallyand mentally disabled residents,” Willyexplains. “Living conditions were farfrom what we would call ideal, butOmprakash told us that he felt likehe was in paradise, simply because thenuns had been so kind to him.”By letting the voices of peoplelike Omprakash resonate among theirfriends and families, Dan, Willy andNick hoped they could share the senseof humility and gratitude that this maninspired in them. So they returned tothe U.S. and started writing letters.Deciding to focus primarily onprojects involving education, the trioembarked on a six-week research trip in2006 to visit more than 20 schools inTibet, funded by grants acquired throughJohns Hopkins and Bowdoin College.“We are also working to connectthe dots by directing volunteers towardschools around the world that haveexpressed the need for native Englishspeakers to help teach the language,”Willy says. “We do not offer any sort ofguide service that will escort travelers toand from their volunteer opportunities;we offer advice and encouragement toyoung Americans looking to broadentheir perspectives by entering a foreigncommunity and forging relationshipswithout the filter of an organized travelgroup. We strongly believe that thiseffort of ours will be eye opening andintensely educational for both Americanvolunteers and the foreign communitiesthey will serve.”The original group has now beenjoined by Gordon Guthrie ’04, AshleyMoore ’05 and former Taft Englishteacher Steve Le. Their largest donationto date is $10,000 to help fundan afterschool center near Cape Town,South Africa, but they have also supporteddiverse projects in India,Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, Pakistan,Zimbabwe, Cambodia.“The thing I want people to understand,”says Willy, “the thing thatexcites me most, is that our website(omprakash.org) has become a selfgeneratingnetwork of relationshipsthrough which Americans can find ways tohelp meet the needs of different grassrootseducational projects around the world.”j Willy Oppenheim ’04, DanFurman ’04, Nick Smith ’04, inthe mountains above McleodGanj in Himachal Pradesh innorthern India, got the ideafor their nonprofit Omprakashwhile volunteering in thecountry during a year off.Courtesy of Omprakash Taft Bulletin Spring 2008