In its second year, a Boone nonprofit is asking for the community’s help in fundraising to help support a school for girls in a village in Odisha, India.

My story begins with realizing the value of education in my own life growing up as an immigrant child, born in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies, living in New Jersey.  My dear mother, Rautee, was illiterate as her stepfather decided, as a child, she would not go to school but instead complete all the daily household chores and take care of her younger step-siblings.