Participants in a women's literacy class meet at night and work by lamplight.

While enhanced ability to compete in an increasingly competitive job market and global environment motivates many students to study abroad, it is frequently the unexpected consequences, at least for many students in many programs, that prove to have the strongest impact on returned study abroad students. Indeed, in some cases, the change in perspectives of students brought about by the study abroad experience have resulted in a commitment to effect positive change in the host country.

This has certainly been the case for a group of MSU students who have participated in the Multidisciplinary Studies in Nepal program, sponsored by the Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and College of Social Science. Last year about a dozen returned study-abroad veterans from this program organized themselves into a support group for their former host country, a group now officially known as the Empower Nepal Foundation-Michigan Chapter (ENF-Mi). Affiliated with the Minnesota-based Empower Nepal Foundation, formed in 1996, the local organization currently has more than 30 active members, including current MSU students and faculty, MSU graduates, and expatriate Nepalese. Their mission is "to build a global network of individuals and institutions, pool resources from network participants, and support the people of Nepal to improve and sustain their environment and quality of life."

It is easy to understand why the Multidisciplinary Studies in Nepal program is popular with adventurous MSU students: it offers a variety of academic courses, making it appropriate for students from numerous majors; it takes place in a culturally rich, ecologically diverse, and scenically magnificent environment; it has a solid support framework for students, few of whom have ever been so far from home, while offering a range of new and exotic experiences; and it is relatively inexpensive, because of the low cost of living in Nepal. Many students make deep and long-lasting friendships with their host families during the program.

Jon Hartough, who participated in the spring 1999 program, is a prime example. Now a James Madison graduate who works for the AFL-CIO, he is one of the founders of ENF-Mi. The close bond with his host family, coupled with the realization that a relatively small investment of U.S. dollars could have a major impact at the grassroots level in Nepal, inspired him to brainstorm with fellow ENF-Mi members to explore ways of linking small-scale, locally designed development projects in Nepal to funding in the United States. As a public-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with some 300 individuals on their contact list, ENF-Mi has been successful in fund raising with individuals and groups to support various projects.

Among ENF-Mi's early successes, one which gained them credibility with village elders and helped establish their reputation as a collaborative partner in solving local problems, was providing the funds to send 27 rural farmers of the Hamsapur and Thumki Village Development Committees to a two-day workshop where they were exposed to new ideas for income-generating crops and farming technologies. The workshop took place in January 2000 at the Lumlie Agriculture Research Center, an agricultural extension center located near Pokhara.

ENF-Mi has also been involved in the development of cold-storage facilities for harvested crops, funding for women's literacy classes, and scholarships for Nepalese school children. In summer 2000, they funded scholarships for former indentured servants in western Nepal. These and other involvements have all been responses to proposals originating at the local level and have all fit ENF-Mi's priority of helping to facilitate low input-high output projects. Given this approach, it is not surprising that among the founding membership were people like Matt Geisler, a returned Peace Corps veteran who served in Nepal, and Jeff Sartin, a 2000 graduate of the MSU Resource Development program and now a Peace Corps trainee in that country.

Amber Middleton, a current MSU student and student teacher working at a Lansing area school, is also serving as executive director and president of ENF-Mi for 2000-01. As this article goes to press, the organization is considering various projects. Middleton says, "We're reviewing various possibilities, including a water resource management education project and a project to supply science equipment for a school."

A key to ENF-Mi's success is collaboration. In addition to the collaboration with grass-roots organizations in Nepal, whose proposals they help to fund, they have collaborated with various Lansing-area Nepalese expatriates and friends of Nepal, as well as local businesses, in fund-raising efforts; with MSU faculty members who have a long history of involvement in development efforts in Nepal, and with their established contacts in that country; with their sister ENF organization in Minnesota; and with other nongovernmental organizations working in Nepal on similar development issues. At the core of this effort, however, is the deep commitment of individual ENF-Mi members to make the world a better place. And for most of them, the intensity of that commitment resulted from their experiences as MSU study abroad students in the Kingdom of Nepal.

-Jay Rodman