Balling for Nepal: Senior Erin Kaye plans a volleyball tournament for her IB project to raise funds for a school in Nepal

Senior Erin Kaye had been brainstorming service projects for an hour and 20 minutes with her friends during IB Theory of Knowledge. After tossing out plans to sell bracelets, pins and sweatshirts, senior Evyn Roberts asked a question that launched months of planning, advertising and Zoom calls with Nepalese students:

“What’s the national sport of Nepal?”

Volleyball — that was it. To raise money for the Zeke O’Connor School, the only STEM school in the sparsely populated Solukhumbu District of Nepal, they’d host an East-wide volleyball tournament.

Erin got the idea to host a fundraiser for the school from her mom, Mary Kaye, a board member of the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds the school and several environmental projects in Nepal.

Charging an entrance fee of $20 per team, Erin plans to raise $10,000 total for her senior Creativity, Activity and Service project that is required through the IB program. But the tournament is just the beginning.

Back in 2015, Erin’s connection with the school started when her brother, Brendan Kaye, researched Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay — the first people to climb Mount Everest — for a National History Day competition. Intrigued by the third world country’s history and culture, he learned about its minimal schooling and resources.

Motivated to help, he contacted Zeke O’Connor, a friend of Sir Edmund Hillary, and discovered the Zeke O’Connor School.

From there, he and Erin’s mom Mary Kaye traveled to Nepal for three weeks in 2016 to meet the residents of Phaplu, the mountainous town where the school is located. They experienced frequent power outages and a lack of air conditioning, but formed personal connections with the students, teachers and parents in the village. Mary and the mothers in Phaplu share the desire for their children to get a good education and many of the mothers aspire for their children to one day go to school in the US or Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. 

Brendan, who was 14 at the time, went to school with the Nepalese high schoolers and bonded through singing and dancing at celebrations for the 50th anniversary of a local hospital.

Mary learned that it costs around $120,000 annually to run the high school and pay for staff salaries, security and learning materials — compared to East’s annual $189 million of expenses. 

Because of the relatively low cost of school expenses, Erin realized that $10,000 could make a difference, so she and her friends Shawnee Mission Northwest senior Annaliese Nguyen and Kansas University freshman Richard Oma-Savage scheduled a Zoom call with three girls from the school. However, communicating long-distance was more complicated than they expected.

“They’ll have several hours of the day where there’s no electricity or the electricity will go out, or many times during the week the electricity goes out,” Mary said. “So that’s an issue — to make sure that they have electricity and internet. There’s also a 10-hour and 45-minute time difference between Nepal and Kansas City, so the biggest challenge is for them to find a time when they can meet.”

Erin and her friends met with the Nepalese students at 9 p.m. — 7:45 a.m. in Nepal — the girls from Nepal using their principal’s phone, the only device they had access to, to join the Zoom call. Erin and her friends discussed school, family and home life with the girls, but the conversation veered toward their interests and hobbies.

“It was just like talking to another person in the US which I didn’t think it would be like,” Erin said. “We shared very similar teenage struggles of going to school, then going to work and then taking care of family and pets. Of course there are some major differences, but in a lot of ways, we’re just very similar.”

The two groups bonded over sports — Erin found out that all of the girls played on their school volleyball team.

“I had so much fun learning about their culture, history and day-to-day life that I decided to make this my CAS project,” Erin said.

Erin gathered a group of IB students to help her plan and alert the East community. So far, she has held two meetings to discuss the date of the tournament and the days and times of more Zoom meetings. IB student and senior Anohita Paul is one of the many students helping Erin plan her volleyball tournament. She wants to find ways to honor the culture of Nepal instead of commercializing it to raise funds.

“At the meetings, we mainly just brainstorm, so we provide ideas and different ways to actually honor their culture instead of just commodifying it,” Anohita said.

The tournament will be on Jan. 20 in East’s main gym. Until then, Erin and her IB classmates will arrange Nepali food trucks for the event and continue Zoom calling with the girls in Nepal about school and their volleyball team.