Hillary legacy extends to education

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s summit of Mount Everest – a quest that many had attempted but failed to complete. He accomplished the feat on May 29, 1953, but he was not alone, nor could he have done it alone. Captured alongside him in a famous photograph at the summit was Tenzing Norgay, a sherpa who had been part of six previous attempts on the climb to the top, the first in 1935.

The Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation opened the doors to its first school in 2011, starting with high-school classes, in the village of Phaplu in Solukhumbu District in Nepal. Zeke O’Connor School added primary classes in 2021 – from early childhood education to Grade 7. It now has 270 students enrolled.

SUPPLIED PHOTO BY PIPPA VON ETZDORF

The relationship between Sir Edmund and Nepal’s sherpa community grew stronger over the years, with Sir Edmund returning to communities along the Everest summit route to give back, just as they had given to him.

One such initiative is the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation (SEHF), which was founded by Sir Edmund and Zeke O’Connor, famous in some circles for his career in the Canadian Football League and in others for his philanthropy work in Nepal.

The two men were friends and Sir Edmund convinced him to make a trip to Nepal in 1973. It would not only change their lives, but the lives of Sherpa communities, a fact that continues to this day.

The men created the foundation in 1974, formalizing a mutual commitment to give back to those in the mountainous regions of Nepal who had helped so many. “A lot has changed since then and a lot hasn’t,” says Karen O’Connor, Zeke’s daughter and current president of SEHF.

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“The focus of the foundation for my dad and for Sir Edmund was always to help the sherpas help themselves. They had to ask for whatever it was they needed. We couldn’t go in and say ‘Okay, we think you need this or we think you need that,’” she explains.

That dynamic remains. Foundation projects are initiated when the community expresses a need and directly requests help. Since its inception, the foundation has been involved in helping these communities in three areas: health, environment and education.

Kunde Hospital, near Kumjung Village, was built prior to SEHF’s creation, but in 1976, the foundation took over its funding and staffing, which included a doctor-exchange program with Canada. The support has shifted to grant scholarships for local sherpas to go through university and medical school so that they can come back and participate in the running of the hospital. “Now we have the hospital fully run by sherpas, both from the administration standpoint and from the medical standpoint,” O’Connor says.

Environmental assistance has been provided through a reforestation project in Sagarmatha National Park during the early 1980s that saw one million seedlings planted over eight years.

Today, the focus is education. Nepalese students are eligible to attend community or public schools, which receive government funding, and private schools, which are self funded.

Many families in these mountainous communities traditionally did not have the capacity to send their children to school – they needed them to help at home or with sherpa work – or they didn’t have the finances required for a private school.

SEHF opened the doors to its first school in 2011, a high school in the village of Phaplu in Solukhumbu District named after Zeke O’Connor. It was decided the curriculum would be focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), and that all students would receive full scholarships. In 2021, it added primary school classes – from early childhood education to Grade 7 – to its portfolio, and it now has 270 students enrolled.

“These families really had no opportunity to go to school, and by having fully funded scholarships, these children would have an incredible life-altering opportunity,” Karen O’Connor says.

Mingmar Sherpa is one of those students. For the youngest of seven children, attending Zeke O’Connor School wasn’t just an opportunity for him to have a fully funded education and to learn English, it was a gateway to educating his community and seeking higher education abroad.

“There are so many people who have never gone out of Solukhumbu District. They don’t know the world exists out there,” Sherpa says. “One of the privileges that we have as a community from Zeke O’Connor School is that the teachers are excellent. They hired people from outside the district who were very well educated.

“The teachers used to tell us, ‘Okay, there is a world out there. Your competition is not just among the 30 people in your class. Your competition is around the world.”

Now 24, Mingmar Sherpa is living in the United States. After completing his undergraduate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a research assistant position at Harvard studying immunology, he’s now working on an independent research project at MIT, exploring an aspect of genetics called morphogenesis, the shaping of organisms.

He stays connected with his village in Nepal and with the school, and he is working on forming an alumni association. “Right now, Zeke O’Connor School is 100-per-cent funded by people in Canada and the U.S. But we, the alumni, graduated from the school, and it is our responsibility to look after the school in the future.”

While there’s no doubt of the importance of this school for its students, it’s also making a significant impact on the broader community in Solukhumbu District. The school has shower facilities so that, after walking one or two hours from home, students can bathe at school and change into their uniforms. SEHF is also looking at relaunching women’s literacy programming for adults in the community, something that was running before the pandemic hit.

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Mary Kaye, a board member of the foundation and SEHF’s primary school liaison, says language classes such as Japanese, and cooking classes - as well as breakfast and lunch programs for students - are all part of lessening the burden on families, financial or otherwise, of sending their children to school.

Kaye also runs the sponsorship program One Student-One Family: Those interested in contributing to the school have the opportunity to sponsor a student’s education (and books, uniforms and extracurriculars) for a year by paying their tuition of $1,000. “We’ve grown from zero to now more than 50 sponsors, which is tremendous,” she says.

Globe and Mail publisher and CEO Phillip Crawley is also a member of the board.

Kaye is organizing a trip this October for folks who want to get their feet on the ground in Nepal, who want to see the foundation’s work up close and meet with the communities who are being helped. “We are going to get very intimate with our projects. People might be interested in seeing how a low-income school is run, and we’ll spend some time with the children and meet with the parents,” Kaye says.

While Sir Edmund and Zeke O’Connor might not have fully known the lasting significance of their first trip together to Nepal, they knew the potential of these sherpa communities when presented with opportunity. That ethos drives SEHF’s outreach and it is instilled in the students of Zeke O’Connor School.

As Mingmar Sherpa says: “If one child from one house can get a better education, then that child can educate his family. And then they can educate the whole community.”

To donate to the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation go to thesiredmundhillaryfoundation.ca, and to support the One Student One Family program directly go to thesiredmundhillaryfoundation.ca/one-student-one-family-program/.

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.