Hemu Adhikari, April Brinks Bailey, Dennis Meyers, and I started Global Action Coalition in 2009.  Our first efforts were in Nepal with school lunch programs, shoes, and backpacks for the children in remote villages in the Chitwan region above India.  As we delved deeper into the issues that kept children back from learning, we started adding programs.  Our first need was supplementing extra teachers.  Some of our schools were finding the teachers overwhelmed.  We were doubling the students attending the food programs as the parents were now sending them to school to get fed.  Soon we were also supplying schools with sweaters to keep the children warm during the winters and much-needed school supplies.  We found that children had a thirst for knowledge in an area where their parents had lived the same subsistence life for thousands of years. Lunch programs worked well as feeding the children there is not always a given, and many of the ones we see in our schools were usually getting one meal a day.  We then found the need to create a middle school class by class and some mostly girls who wanted to go to high school but required them to leave at the school as it was at least a 4-hour trek each way.  Our scholarship program covered the costs, and we also had some graduates that needed help with college costs.

We had hoped for more children to take advantage of that but found their grades were unexceptional and realized that the teachers, though dedicated needed better training.  So we began a Teacher Training program.  We have also worked with partners to deal with the homeless problem with Manavsewa Ashram, Autism with School for Disabled and Rehabilitation Center and Autism Care Nepal and the Antodoya School helping orphans.

When a massive earthquake hit Nepal, we suddenly found ourselves in the disaster business.  One of our partners delivered food and supplies we purchased to a village that had not been helped. We worked with the Tampa Bay Indian, Nepal communities, and concerned friends raised over $100,000 to help.  We were part of building hundreds of temporary shelters, rebuilding a school lavatory, and other projects we felt were necessary. At this time, we also looked into the needs of another country Djibouti, in Africa. We found a village with no shelters for their school, so we partnered with Alaska Shelters and US Shipping Line to deliver Blue Med Shelters to our partner, the Djibouti Army.  Five tents went to help three schools and one to the Djibouti Army to create a medical facility for refugees from Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen.  We also started our first Micro-Loan Program in the Village of Douda for women to help them have money to make their lives and their village better. Finally, our last major project was helping feed hungry people that were stranded in the cities without jobs and transportation back home. We worked with our partner Ramji Adhikari and his Manavsewa Ashram. 

We are currently adding a second Micro-loan project for women in Nepal, reviving the Djibouti one that COVID had disrupted, and doing some more teacher training in Nepal.  We are also beginning an exciting training program working with Dr. Alex Akulli in Albania and neighboring countries to give women much-needed schools through zoom links set up in the United States.  There will also be a program to set up libraries in villages so the community will have access to printed materials to help them better their lives.

Global Action will continue building on the programs that we have found successful and working with our partners to meet the needs in the areas we have been working.  Our biggest new project is just taking shape.  Rob Rowen uses his contacts in the diplomatic, international military and NGO communities to enlist an A list of people.  They share his vision that true peace in many countries can only be achieved when there is an international working together of the military, diplomats and NGOs.