Olga Murray
Founder and President of NYOF (Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation)

Olga Murray graduated with honors from Columbia University and received her law degree from George Washington University in 1954. Although there were very few women lawyers at that time and most law firms would only hire a female lawyer as a secretary, Olga was offered the first job for which she applied – as a staff attorney to the Chief Justice of California. She worked for the California State Supreme Court until her retirement in 1992. During her time there, Olga helped write important decisions in the areas of children’s issues and women’s rights.

Olga first visited Nepal in 1984. After seeing the terribly impoverished condition of children in the villages, she resolved that she would return to help them. On another trip in Nepal in 1987, Olga broke her ankle. Upon returning to Kathmandu, she was treated by a young doctor who had just opened a small hospital for poor, severely disabled children, where all care was free and of a high standard. Through this connection, she began giving scholarships to disabled children who had no way of getting to school in their villages, and needed to come to Kathmandu for boarding school. As the number of scholarships grew, she decided it was time to start a foundation that would help these kids in an organized way.

In 1990, she founded the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation (NYOF) to provide the most impoverished children of Nepal with what should be every child’s birthright – education, housing, medical care, and loving support. NYOF leverages the monies from developed countries to maximize the aid for these children.

NYOF has an excellent all-Nepali staff in Nepal, an outstanding U.S. staff, and an active and committed Board of Directors in the U.S. Olga still leads NYOF, spending most of each year in Nepal overseeing the organization’s projects, and the remainder at her home in Sausalito, California, raising funds for NYOF’s programs. The scope of her outreach and the number of children she helps has increased dramatically every year.

“The improvement we see in the lives of the children we help leaves us with a sense of elation,” Olga says. “Imagine spending your days providing any kind of help to a child you encounter who needs and deserves it. Nothing rekindles hope in the human condition more than witnessing the transformation of a child.”