By Marion Filler
What does it take to change the world?
Between the Mountain and the Sky, a documentary about Mendham native Maggie Doyne and the Kopila Valley School she founded in a remote region of Nepal, may hold the answer.
The movie is coming to Morristown’s Mayo Performing Arts Center on Nov. 3, 2024. It also may be seen at the Montclair Film Festival on Oct. 19.
“It’s very personal, very visceral. It’s nine years of my life followed by cameras,” says Doyne, whose husband, Jeremy Power Regimbal, a Canadian filmmaker, shot footage and was integral to the direction and editing of the movie.
It was crowdfunded on Kickstarter and shown at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, CO, and won Best Documentary awards at the Athens International Monthly and Dublin Independent film fests.
The documentary is a saga — a love story among Doyne and approximately 600 children and 165 staff members who live, study and work at Kopila. It’s also a personal love story between Doyne and Regimbal, who has embraced her mission.
“He was a commercial filmmaker up until we met and got married. Then he moved to Nepal and stepped into the role of major father figure to the children,” Doyne says.
Slideshow photos of Maggie Doyne. Click/hover on images for captions:
“The goal of my lifetime is to severely and significantly reduce child poverty, because I believe that most of the violence in our world, and most of the problems, stem from children not being properly cared for and educated,” says Doyne, the main character in the story.
“If I want to tackle that issue, then I have to create a model that we can prove will work and that inspires other people.”
Doyne’s journey started in 2005. She was 18, and spent a gap year backpacking through India and Nepal after graduating from Mendham High School.
What she discovered was a world of abandoned and impoverished women and children who were casualties of 11 years of civil war in Nepal. Doyne was heartbroken to see them living under tarps and working for pennies by cracking rocks on the roadside.
Then she did something about it.
In 2006, Doyne founded what would become the Kopila Valley School by using $5,000 of hard-earned babysitting money to purchase a piece of property.
This was followed by her effort to start the BlinkNow Foundation, through which she pursued donations, acquired endorsements, and developed a green campus that can accommodate up to 500 students and a staff of professionals, volunteers and parents.
Community involvement has been the key to success. In addition to a Nepali Board, the school is run by a team of 165 Nepalese who consider themselves part of a family. The children call Doyne “mother,” a role she relishes.
The New Jersey connection has been equally important.
“The Community Foundation of New Jersey has incubated us from the beginning,” Doyne explains, adding, “it really happened because of Kim Wentworth. She is one of my very first investors, the first person who called me for a meeting ever.”
A story ran in a weekly newspaper on a Monday, and by Thursday of that week, “I was having lunch with Kim. She has supported me with her whole heart,” Doyne says.
“Maggie’s work is so very important, especially in times like these,” says Wentworth, formerly of Morristown. “Her actions, not her words, demonstrate her sincerity and love for others.”
Doyne’s passion is contagious. In 2015, she was honored as “Hero of the Year” by CNN, which described her as “a New Jersey woman who used her babysitting savings to change the lives of hundreds of Nepalese women and children.”
She was awarded $100,000 at a star-studded ceremony in New York. In 2022, she wrote Between the Mountain and the Sky, which drew an appreciative audience at the Morristown Festival of Books and is the inspiration for the film.
Doyne created a proven model for success, as demonstrated by Kopila Valley School students who are winning scholarships in Nepal as well as Australia, Canada and the U.S. Now she wants to share her knowledge with others.
“Our long term goal is to improve schools by sharing our curriculum, our methodology ad our standards so that we can raise the bar. When you can show what’s possible, it gets everyone looking at what you are doing. Kopila is recognized nationally and now internationally and proves that you can take a stray or orphaned child and turn them into an incredible success story.
“I want to create something that will live beyond my time, and for me that’s what the book and movie are all about.”
The Morristown screening of Between the Mountain and the Sky starts at 3:30 pm on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. Tickets are $20-$300 and benefit the BlinkNow Foundation. At 100 South St., 973-539-8008. The Montclair Film Festival showing is at 4 pm on Saturday, Oct. 19, at the Wellmont Theater. Tickets: $15-$17.
Morristown has a long history of people stepping forward in pivotal moments.
When you chip in to Morristown Green, you’re helping your neighbors stay informed, strengthening our civic backbone, and carrying on the spirit that’s defined this town since its earliest days.
Rally for local news.
I saw her on Floortje Dessing’s travel program and was touched! Where and when can we see the film online and yes i want to pay to watch it!
Thank you Maggie Doyne, what an amazing life. I have read about Maggie sometimes over the years and now, all I can think about her is what a rich, caring life she has led.