When Maria was a high school senior, she was on track. You know the one: Graduate on 1 time, spend four years at college, get a job.
"I just woke up one morning feeling empty," Maria explains. "I didn't know 2 I wanted to do, or who I wanted to be. 3 at the very last moment, I decided not to go to college." She signed herself up for a gap year program 4 included outdoor survival classes and service learning, and headed off to India, at a time of civil war across the border in Nepal.
The war created nearly a 5 orphans(孤儿). She says, "I was really shocked 6 the way women and children were living. I had never seen 7 like that."
She continued to travel throughout the region, meeting kids and listening to 8 stories. Then she made up a life-changing decision-to live in the Kopila Valley, asking her parents to send her the $5,000 she saved up for years. The money went towards 9 land on which she built a children's home.
"I wanted to give these kids a childhood similar to the one I had, 10 family and love," she explains. A couple of years later, she opened a school. The school now has 340 students and a high school 11 soon.
The next stage of Maria's work? A women's center. "A lot of women in my community were really having terrible lives." Maria says. The center has become a source of light for women. The girls and women 12 much through the school and the center.
There's now a program that attracts volunteers, and the effect in Kopila is 13 just a beginning." When I was 16, I didn't have any idea where life 14 take me." She says," Now I wake up every day loving my work and thinking I have the 15 job in the universe."
