There’s a nice story by Ginanne Brownell in the New York Times about funding education for good but poor students in Nepal. A while ago a group of Nepalis who had made it all the way up through the education system to higher degrees noticed that even good students from poor and marginalized communities were abandoning their studies well before the end of high school. “An estimated 1,500 Nepalese leave the country each day in search of jobs abroad (28.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product comes from remittances).” In 2012 they therefore decided to set up a grassroots NGO called the Samaanta Foundation with the aim of bridging the gap – which often amounts to no more than $100. “The idea was to fund the students, referred to as fellows, through their higher secondary education and, depending on their abilities and motivation, help finance a few of them through university.” And that is what has been happening on a small-scale throughout the two years since.