School to be Built in Nepal to Honor Late Alpinist Charlotte Fox
USA, July 3/ In her numerous trips to Nepal, as she amassed more 8,000-meter summits than any American woman before her, Charlotte Fox, who died on May 24 of this year, was always looking for ways to give back to the country that gave so much to her. For the 14 years before her unexpected passing, Fox worked closely with the dZi Foundation—a non-profit committed to improving underserved populations in Nepal through improveing public facilities, public health, education, income levels and more—and now dZi, along with Fox’s friends, wants to honor her legacy.
On June 26, dZi President and Co-Founder Jim Nowak and Nepal Country Director Ben Ayers announced the creation of the Charlotte Fox Memorial School Fund which will “support the much-needed reconstruction of the Shree Mayur Primary School in Maheswori, Nepal.” Nowak and Ayers wrote, “This is the best tribute we can imagine for the full, adventurous and generous life Charlotte lived.”
The Shree Mayur school serves some 139 children, but in the destruction wrought by the 2015 earthquake the schoolhouse was all but decimated. While the students have continued to attend school in the damaged classrooms, the facilities are not a safe place for them to be studying, and a new school is badly needed.
Fox’s friends and dZi are trying to raise $53,000 to finance construction of the new school. If fundraising goals are met on time, the current timeline calls for building to conclude by May 2019, which mean the students could start using it shortly after the start of the Nepalese school year, in April. The dZi Foundation has considerable experience shepherding similar projects from conception to completion—it helped rebuild 28 schools in the wake of the earthquake.
To read more about Charlotte Fox’s exceptional life in the mountains—as a ski patroller in Colorado and as a trailblazing American alpinist in the Greater Ranges—read Rock and Ice Executive Editor Alison Osius’ remembrance.
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