ABOUT US
Our Leadership
Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Waisler Rubin is the founder of the Unatti Foundation. She holds administrative responsibility for financial and business planning, as well as the designing and management of Unatti’s programs. She is a mother of two, an art educator at the Brentwood Art Center, and a professional portrait and special events photographer.
Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Pradhananga holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in business and facilitates the Foundation’s activities on the ground in Bhaktapur. He manages both the housing and arts facilities, as well as the handicraft business
Our Partners
HEARTbeats Foundation
The HEARTbeats Foundation began in June 2010 and collaborated with the Unatti Foundation to build the Unatti Arts and Music Center. Founded by two musicians, Lynn Harrell and his wife Helen Nightengale, HEARTbeats strives to give children the power of music to better cope with, and recover from, the extreme poverty they face in their young lives. For more information, visit www.heartbeatsforchildren.org.
Children’s Art Village
CAV seeks to bring artistic curricula to impoverished communities throughout the world. Working at orphanages in Ghana and India, its founder Mai Lai agrees that art and music foster great personal development in children who have faced great challenges in their young lives. The Unatti Foundation hopes its relationship with the Children’s Art Village will continue to grow, and that the two will allow even more orphaned and underprivileged children the opportunity to cope with their emotions through the arts. For more information, visit www.childrensartvillage.org
Maiti Nepal
Once Maiti Nepal founder Anuradha Koirala was awarded the CNN Hero of the Year and appeared on television in an hour-long special featuring her efforts to fight sex trafficking, the Unatti Foundation has reached out to work together with this prestigious organization. Maiti Nepal provides rehabilitation programs and space for women to recover from the horrors of sex trafficking. We similarly believe that education and self-sufficiency aid women in fighting the cycle of poverty and prostitution. The women of Maiti Nepal now work with us on our handicrafts project—we hope to train and provide employment for the brave, recovering women of Maiti Nepal. For more information, visit www.maitinepal.org.
Dolpo School Project
In October, 2002, Stephanie Waisler Rubin met Norbu while sipping milk tea in Lotus Gallery in Thamel, Nepal. Over a shared cup of tea, Norbu shared with Waisler Rubin his project that began the very first school in Dolpo, his native village.
Norbu was born in Bantsang, a village in Dolpo, remotely situated in the snowy landscape in Western Nepal. Nestled in the Himalayas at 13,500 feet, Dolpo had seen no Westerners until 1988, when trekkers were first granted permission to traverse the raw terrain in the region. Enveloped in snow for eight months out of the year, the staple diet for the region is tsampa (barley flour), yak butter tea and yak meat. “Through the generations,” he said, “my family has passed along the traditional style of art known as Thanka painting. In Dolpo, when I was young, paper and pencil were scarce so I would draw on the sand and the snow.”
Norbu’s brand new Dolpo school currently has 54 students and two full-time teachers. Supplies are scarce and conditions are rugged. The current operating budget is $6,000.00 a year. Norbu’s dream is that one day, his school will expand enough to accommodate the 500 children in the outlying villages.
Moved by his dedication to providing education to the children of his village and their similar objectives, Waisler Rubin made a commitment to support Dolpo School with as much financial backing as possible through the Unatti Foundation. This kind of grass roots effort is what Unatti is all about, as we continue to find ways to improve conditions, educate and offer hope to the children of Nepal.
