A Brief But Spectacular take on family

Transcript

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William Brangham: Maggie Doyne’s decision to postpone college and work with refugees in India transformed her life and the lives of many others. Her story has been captured through the lens of filmmaker and partner Jeremy Power Regimbal.

Here’s Maggie and Jeremy’s Brief But Spectacular take on family.

Maggie Doyne, Co-Founder, Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School: Growing up in New Jersey, my parents were a little bit off the beaten track with the no TV and the no Internet. I was pretty lucky. I had everything in the world, from a soccer team to play on to a really good public school to go to.

As I was graduating in 2005, everyone was going to college, college, college, college, college. And kind of at the very last minute, I signed up for a gap year. I ended up in the Northeast of India, and I was working in a refugee region.

It felt somehow easier to stay and take on something that was hard and challenging than it felt to just turn away and go back.

I moved to Nepal, learned the language, found my co-founder, Tope. OK, this is Tope. Hello.

Tope Malla, Co-Founder, Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School: I know that life — what is the hungry life, what is the freezing life, and what is the hard time.

Maggie Doyne: Tope was from this region in Karnali of Nepal. He’d grown up in orphan, and he had moved to India as a child porter when he was 10 years old. He was working with refugees and migrants from his community in India, and when we met, instantly connected.

And he was like: “I want to go back to my home village. I want to go back to my region and give back to kids like me.”

First, we listened.

Woman (through interpreter): There is not enough food for everyone.

Man (through interpreter): Ninety-five percent not food enough. Ninety-five percent not food enough.

Maggie Doyne: We made the decision to move away from this scratch-the-surface Band-Aid approach into holistic community-driven development.

There was this little strip of land for sale for $5,000, and I had been a babysitter in New Jersey, and I had my parents wire it to me, and that became Kopila Valley Children’s Home. Today, it’s been home to over 90 kids.

In 2010, we opened our dream school for the region’s most vulnerable children. It is all about joy and nature and knowledge, and we tried to create a school that you would want your children to go to. We ended up building a women’s center and a food and farming group, and everything kind of started with one really small idea, but then built on and organically kind of changed and started to grow.

So, Jeremy was a filmmaker from Canada, and we ended up instantly connecting, and we fell in love. And here he is. Here’s Jeremy.

Hey.

Jeremy Power Regimbal, Filmmaker: Hey.

(Laughter)

Jeremy Power Regimbal: My name is Jeremy. I’m the love interest in the story.

(Laughter)

Jeremy Power Regimbal: Over the past nine years, I have been capturing our journey and love story together. And the film is called “Between the Mountain and the Sky.”

I think it’s about finding hope in the dark, even when the world seems like it’s all against you.

Maggie Doyne: Like, if you count the spots on their back, you know how old they are.

Jeremy Power Regimbal: And just the idea of, what does it mean to be a family?

Maggie Doyne: Our decision to have biological children happened really early, and all of a sudden, Ruby was there. And we were definitely worried about like, what is it going to mean to bring a biological child into the family, and will there be jealousy or strange feelings?

But, again, like everything else, Ruby did fit perfectly.

Jeremy Power Regimbal: We were just dropping Nisha, the first child that ever came to the house. She was about to go on a gap year of her own. Ruby’s being buckled into the car seat, and just like this tiny baby that needs everything, and there’s another child that’s going off into the world and leaving us. I was like, well, only another 53 kids to go.

(Laughter)

Maggie Doyne: The first cohort of children and graduates are out in the world. They have gotten scholarships to some of the most prestigious colleges and universities, and they’re bringing so much change into the world. It’s incredible.

My name is Maggie Doyne.

Jeremy Power Regimbal: My name is Jeremy Power Regimbal.

Maggie Doyne: And this is our Brief But Spectacular take on family.

William Brangham: You can find more Brief But Spectacular videos at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.