Stowe couple receives Rotary award for work in Nepal

The award can be given to anyone who donates over $1,000 to the organization, but in this particular instance the award also recognizes a community-altering gift from half the world away.

Damp led the work along with her sister, Joan Holcombe, and friend Didi Kearsley, while Heath, who’s partnered with Damp, helped put together the funding as a longtime Rotarian.

Damp, Holcombe and Kearsley taught for a time at the secondary school in Nepal and it was through them that Heath learned that most libraries in the region were either primitive or nonexistent and how important a library could be to the residents of the region.

With cooperation between the Stowe Rotary and Rotary Foundation, Heath helped coordinate a $35,000 grant to provide the rural Nepalese school with a fully modern library equipped with computers and other resources.

The library took several years to complete, a project which was overseen on the ground by Damp, Holcombe and Kearsley, and included a 2015 trip where they were present for a devastating 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Nepal that resulted in nearly 9,000 dead and widespread destruction.

Over the course of several trips, Damp and the other women oversaw the construction of the library on the ground while Heath coordinated the administrative details with the Kathmandu North chapter of the Rotary organization and construction workers.

“To be able to reach out and help those young people is thrilling to me, because $35,000 in that country goes a long, long way,” Heath said.

After several years, the project was completed and continues to be sustainably funded by a partnership between the Rotary chapters in Stowe, the international organization and the group’s Kathmandu North chapter.

Heath, a former substitute teacher, has also worked on the yearly scholarships the organization awards to Stowe High School students and was also called a “machine” at selling tickets for the organization’s annual Keys to the Village fundraiser by Stowe Rotary member and former president Tom Hubbs.

Hubbs reserved special praise for Damp, who had her own career as a teacher at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, in his speech bestowing the award, named for the Vermont-born founder of the Rotary Foundation, upon the couple.

“Simply put, Carrie is the embodiment of Rotary’s motto, ‘Service Above Self,’” Hubbs said. “The work in Nepal took place during my time as club president and so I got to see first-hand the effort Carrie put into making the project a success.

“From the planning to actually establishing the library and computer learning center in the village of Koshidekha, Carrie was front and center. No small task when you consider that just getting there required a drive of about six hours to go 35 miles from Kathmandu to the village — think about that the next time we encounter construction traffic,” Hubbs said.

Updated Friday, Jan. 6, 2023, to reflect the correct name of Larry Heath.

Updated Monday, Jan. 17, 2023, to reflect the library was built in rural Nepal, not Tibet.