Eloise, a senior at Greenwich Academy, recently raised much needed funds to support girls’ higher education at the Salleri Girls Hostel in Nepal where she lived and worked last summer. On June 1st, 2025, Eloise completed the Fairfield Road Races half marathon, raising $8,000 to cover the cost of a full year of tuition and board for eight Nepalese girls. All funds were donated to the incredible non-profit, The Small World, which supports Nepalese girls through education, housing and mentorship. The Small World, which runs the Solukhumbu campus and program, provides guardianship for girls to have a safe place to learn and grow, offering free tuition, housing, uniforms, medical care, and books, with the goal of giving these girls the chance to become role models, upon return, in their remote villages across the Everest Valley. Education gives these wonderful girls hope, promise, skills, and is a clear deterrent from the dangers of early marriage and sex trafficking.
Eloise lived at the boarding house with these cheerful, genuinely grateful girls, where she primarily taught English, prepared meals and played a lot of volleyball! These girls found such joy and happiness in every encounter. Yet, they have so little. She, in turn, gained incredible perspective and committed to giving back to people, and a place that gave her so much. Through the HLF Ambassador Program, Eloise sought to sponsor girls who deserve a chance at completing high school (above grade 10); currently, 7 out of 10 girls drop out of school at this point and the literacy rate of women is just 23% in this remote area of the Everest Valley. The Solukhumbu Girls Higher Education effort seeks to extend this education to the completion of 12th grade, empowering more girls to become social workers, teachers, business women, doctors, and farmers. This education serves as a model to help uplift households, communities, and ultimately nations out of poverty.
Eloise’s commitment goes beyond her service trip last summer and this fundraiser. This summer, she partnered with The Small World to undertake research to document the impact of girls’ education in developing countries on their communicates and the effect of education on early marriages and pregnancy with the goal of promoting girls education more broadly. The HLF Ambassador program gave the tools, initiative and motivation to invest more deeply in an organization that has made an impact on Eloise, and so many young, at-risk girls.
Written by HLFYA Eloise Warden
