(Author’s Note: This was originally written for a grant for the DoSomething awards in Spring of 2011 — with elements co-written by the co-founder of OWP, Jake Waters. I have edited details — such as our current website — for today’s use)

Hello, my name is Ben Honeycutt, an eighteen year old college bound student in central Kansas. Last year, my father and a group of educators came into contact with a teacher from Nepal named Govinda Panthy. Govinda explained that he ran an isolated school with limited resources and asked for our assistance. The seniors at my high school were all asked to do a senior project before their graduation. After learning about the struggle of Govinda and his students, I knew I had found my senior project.

I became connected with Govinda through digital mediums such as Skype and Facebook. After a few audio conversations with Govinda, I was amazed to discover that he had to walk an hour to an internet cafe to have access to the internet, and just how limited his school actually was. After inquiring about what he needed most, Govinda expressed his dream to bring a library to his school.

However, over the next few months, everyone involved with the project quickly discovered how difficult it was to communicate with Govinda and his students. Oftentimes, we would only be able to talk to him twice a month, and we quickly realized that we would need to find a solution to this problem before we could move forward. Additionally, we hit a roadblock when our initial efforts to start the project as a student body were shut down by senior English teacher, John Knapp, who felt that the overtures from the SAV School could be a scam. Mr. Knapp’s fears were shared by Buhler High School’s administration, and for a while, the STUCO leaders at Buhler were informed they may have to consider another school project.

Govinda with his students, read more about Govinda’s INCREDIBLE story here.

To answer all questions of the legitimacy of this school and its director, my friend Jake Waters and I set out to verify the school’s existence. Using Google Earth, We compared the front views of the school in Govinda’s photographs with the buildings and roof lines we saw in the application. Govinda happily provided us an expansive list of volunteers who had worked at the school. We then started emailing people who had previously visited the school. We found a Nepalese NGO who spoke to the school’s existence, but our English teacher was still unconvinced.

Despite losing the support of the school, my friend Jake Waters and I started The Open World Project over Christmas Break. After learning more from Govinda, we discovered that it would cost around $2,000 to bring two laptops and a year's worth of internet to his school. Keeping Govinda’s dream of building a library in mind, The Open World Project set out to raise a total of $5,000 for the school.

During this process, our inquiries were then returned by a teacher from Australia who had volunteered at the school once before. He happily answered all of our questions and provided pictures of himself at the school.

These pictures proved to be the evidence our senior English teacher was looking for, who told me that a project like this fulfilled the exact mission statement of Buhler’s Golden Millenium Scholarship. He gave me kind of a sly nod with that comment (students of Mr. Knapp are well familiar with this). Arising from a working class background and from someone who struggles academically, hearing that vote of confidence from Mr. Knapp after his initial skepticism had a profound impact on me. I struggled being an “out of district” kid in Buhler and never really felt accepted, hearing a promise like from a teacher like Mr. Knapp made me feel a support that I honestly never felt at Buhler before. Mr. Knapp then contacted KAKE NEWS, the Hutchinson News, and local press to promote our project.

Jake and I constructed a website explaining the mission of our project, we also built Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk pages to help spread the word about our goals.

Our story in the Hutchinson News became syndicated, allowing a person named Nicholas Lal to discover our project through Google Alerts. Already planning a trip to Kathmandu, he traveled to the SAV School to meet Govinda and his students. Nicholas witnessed the difficulties the school was facing and captured thousands of pictures which he shared with those involved with the Project.

The project’s momentum continued when it caught the attention of “Powerful Learning Practice,” an educational company based in Virginia. Hoping to help the students of the SAV School, the company sent a $1,000 check to the Open World Project. This donation sent the project above its initial $2,000 goal, and we soon wired the amount to Govinda’s bank account. The first transaction secured, the Project waited anxiously for its first opportunity to contact the school.

On April 3rd, 2011, one week after we sent the first transaction to Govinda, the Open World Project attempted to have their first video contact with the Sav School. After two hours filled with technical difficulties, the Open World Project had their first successful Skype conversation with the Sav School. The initial goal of the project realized, support began to flood in from around the world, The Enabling Support Foundation quickly jumped in and introduced the teachers of the SAV School to teachers in Pakistan and Cameroon through the SAV School’s new connectivity. Govinda also began to develop ideas for group projects with classrooms in the United States and the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this initial success has not alleviated the hardships present in the other aspects of the project. Soon after the Sav School received the laptops from the Open World Project, they were informed that they would lose half of their buildings due to one of their leases being revoked. This devastating news has caused the Sav School to lose a portion of the students they had over the previous year. In addition, The Open World Project faced a major setback upon the discovery that one of its integral sponsors had withdrawn from our cause, leaving us $700 short of the $5,000 necessary to complete the project.

While this adversity has dented a part of the enthusiasm we previously possessed, we are confident that we will find an answer to these problems due to the success we’ve seen in this project. What began as a simple idea has blossomed into something that could change the lives of a countless number of students around the world. If we could find solutions to the incredible amount of problems we faced in the project’s beginning, then it is clear that with support from the individuals and businesses who made this project possible, we can overcome the current challenges set against the students of the SAV School.

For further information about our the roots of this project and to witness the effort so far, please visit, http://openworldcause.org/

You can also find us on facebook at this address,

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Open-World-CAUSE

Thank you for your consideration,

Ben Honeycutt and Jake Waters of the Open World Project

Open World Project April 2011 Update

Documentary of the Open World Project

Through the Window