“That’s what initially led me to Nepal,” he says. He came to Nepal in 1998 as part of a four-month study abroad program. “I came because of the Himalaya. I had great ambitions as a mountaineer,” he remembers.[break]
In the first visit, it was the porters who caught his attention. Seeing porters carrying heavy loads for both expeditions and commercial purposes sparked his interest.
“I worked as a porter myself for a long time. I carried commercial loads in eastern Nepal and tagged along on trek routes,” he says. Seeing porters work so hard was a real indicator of the value of being alive.
The dZi Foundation is a small organization, the philosophy of which is based on the belief that the communities themselves are the experts on development: they’re the ones who know what their needs are and can respond to emerging changes.
He explains, “Our approach is long-term and we look at long-term change and try to support communities with their own goals and own ambitions. We believe they are the true experts on what needs to happen and what should rightfully happen for them. It’s not our position as outsiders to determine that.”
The Foundation doesn’t focus on a certain sector. It tries to teach the communities basic skills and instill a sense of accomplishment that really truly allows them to take command of their own futures.
“We help form small non-government organizations (NGOs). They come to us with proposals for funding that include what their contribution is. Then we fill in the gaps while teaching them how to implement their projects. Many times we get proposals for things we can’t fund, either because we don’t have enough expertise in it or enough funds. We also help those NGOs and our local community partners find funding from other sources. The idea is to have communities drive the development process, development that grows out of the community instead of something that comes down as a mandate from a donor.” he says.
He adds that this approach is able to capture the strength, the resilience and the intelligence of the Nepali people. The Foundation has built over a dozen schools and thousands of toilets in households. It has also ranged into forming over a hundred parents-teachers associations (PTAs).
The other signature piece of the organization is the extremely high levels of local contribution. “The amount of time and labor that these communities put in is absolutely phenomenal and we’re inspired and humbled by them every day. It’s not uncommon to see that every household puts in 20 or 30 days of labor with large infrastructural projects, such as schools. It makes me think that Nepal has a lot to offer to the international community, in terms of characteristics of community cohesion, of motivation, of the ability to contribute to your own development rather than relying upon external sources to do that,” he states.
Some years ago, Ayers collected poems written by porters and translated them into English. The collection, “Two Fists of Bread,”’ was sold to raise funds. Many years later, sitting in a tiny classroom during a PTA meeting trying to inspire people to contribute to their own development, he faced the poems again. An old porter was giving up his favorite book to the school library.
“It was as if I had come full circle,” Ayers says.
Ayers was featured on “Inspirations: The Essence of Life,” a personality-based television series presented by Media Gallery and Global Exposition and Management Services in association with Republica. The program is aired on Nepal Television every Wednesday at 10:10 PM.
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