A concert benefiting the children of Chyangba Village

A concert benefiting the children of the Chyangba Village in Nepal, presented by Education Elevated. Sunday 25 April, five o’clock until eight, at The MUSE Performance Space in Lafayette, Colorado.

Tickets are $65 and they include a soft drink and a slice of pizza from the Amore Pizza Truck. Food service starts at 4:30 pm, half an hour before the first act. There is a silent auction. All net proceeds go to Education Elevated.

The shape of the evening

Doors and food service at 4:30 pm. Music from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Three hours of it, one room, one Sunday afternoon running into the evening.

The first half hour belongs to The H.D.H. Experience. At 5:30 pm Cody Qualls and The Brand New Ancients take over and play through to eight, with The M.D.H. Experience appearing as a special guest.

The silent auction runs alongside the music rather than interrupting it, with unique items to bid on. Anyone who wants to check a detail before the day can call Gerri on (303) 815-3567, which is the same number that reaches Education Elevated at any other time of year.

A Buyer’s Choice Home Inspections is the concert sponsor.

Three hours is a short evening by the standards of a fundraiser, and that is deliberate. It is a Sunday. People come after lunch, eat standing up, bid on something, hear a band, and are home before the working week starts. The money it raises does not depend on anybody staying late.

The MUSE, on South Boulder Road

The venue is The MUSE Performance Space, 200 East South Boulder Road, Lafayette, Colorado.

Lafayette is also where the organisation lives. Education Elevated Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt Colorado non-profit corporation, registered at 225 Beacon Hill Drive, Lafayette, Colorado 80026, about two miles from the stage.

That short distance is worth saying out loud, because the other end of the line is a village in the Solukhumbu District of Nepal, in the Everest region. An evening of music on South Boulder Road pays teacher salaries on the side of a Himalayan hill. The whole organisation is built out of that kind of gap.

The organisation began in Colorado too. Gerri Kier met Pem and Moni Sherpa on a Rotary hiking day in July 2006, walking around Cotton Wood Pass outside Buena Vista. Pem, who grew up in Chyangba, suggested she take on trekking in Nepal by hiking to Everest Base Camp. The trek went on the schedule for May 2008, and Education Elevated came out of the conversations around it.

The bill

The H.D.H. Experience opens, 5:00 pm to 5:30 pm.

Cody Qualls and The Brand New Ancients play from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm, the long set and the one the evening is named for.

The M.D.H. Experience appears as a special guest.

Two and a half of the three hours belong to one band, which is unusual for a benefit and better for it. There is no succession of short turns and nothing called from the stage between them. A silent auction does not need a microphone, so the music runs.

What the ticket covers

A ticket is $65. It covers the music, a soft drink and a slice of pizza from the Amore Pizza Truck.

Food service opens at 4:30 pm, which is deliberate. It gives people half an hour to arrive, eat and look at the auction tables before the first act, so that nobody is queueing for a slice while a band is playing.

The silent auction

A silent auction runs through the evening, with unique items. It is the part of the night that raises money from people who came for the music and stayed for a table of things they did not expect to want.

A silent auction also does something a ticket price cannot. A ticket is one number for everybody in the room. An auction lets a person who can give more give more, quietly, without anybody announcing it.

Where the net proceeds go

All net proceeds from the event go to help Education Elevated in its ongoing efforts to support education and to eliminate economic barriers in primary and secondary schools in needy communities throughout the world.

In practice that sentence has one address. Since 2008 the organisation has focused its efforts on the students of the Chyangba Village in Nepal, and the money from an evening in Lafayette lands on the four lines of a single school year.

The projects Education Elevated supports are funded by individual and company sponsors, and all funds raised are applied to the designated education campaign.

Net proceeds is the honest phrase and worth reading carefully. An evening like this one has a venue, a pizza truck, a sound system and three acts behind it, and what reaches Nepal is what is left when those are settled. The sponsor exists to make that remainder larger.

The mission the money serves is written the same way every time it appears: to support and promote education and to eliminate economic barriers in primary and secondary schools in needy communities throughout the world. The second half of that sentence is the operative one. The barriers in Chyangba are economic, they are small, and they are absolute.

Every dollar raised is applied to the campaign it was raised for.

What the money reaches

A school year in Chyangba costs $22,200. The yearly operating budget covers four initiatives: the girls’ hostel, student uniforms, teacher salaries and general school operations.

Twenty girls board at the hostel for the ten month school year, at no cost to their families, because they live too far from the school to walk in and out each day. The dormitory below the school campus was finished in February 2026, and each of them now has her own bed and bedding, a study room, a shared dining area and running water.

The school itself takes 56 children through primary school every year. It is the Wongchu Biswa Darshan Lower Secondary School, rebuilt in 2016 after the earthquake of the year before, and it is still the only earthquake resistant school in the region.

Two of the four budget lines exist because of specific barriers. Students in Nepal are required by law to have a school uniform, and often the only barrier between a child and their education is that their parents cannot afford the school mandated attire. And Nepali students need English to reach better jobs and higher wages, but the government will not pay salaries for English teachers.

The hostel is the oldest of the four lines and the least visible. Education Elevated pays for accommodation so that girls who live too far to walk to school every day have somewhere to stay, on the principle that where a child lives should not decide whether that child is educated. It runs for ten months of the year and the families pay nothing towards it.

None of these lines is ever finished. A building has an end date and a school year does not, which is why an evening of music in April is not a one off but a fixture.

The same money by other routes

Not everyone who wants to help can sit in a room in Lafayette on a Sunday afternoon, and the organisation keeps the other doors open all year.

Sponsoring a girl’s education is $600 as a single gift, or six monthly donations of $100. School supplies run from $20 to $250, and a donor chooses the need. The 2026 Nepal flood relief appeal takes any amount.

Cheques go to Education Elevated, 225 Beacon Hill Drive, Lafayette, Colorado 80026. Anyone sending one is asked to note on the cheque which campaign they are funding, because the funds are applied to the designated campaign and the note is how the office knows which one that is.

Telling other people is its own contribution. Passing the link on through social media or an email is one of the ways the organisation asks people to get involved, and it costs nothing at all.

Why a concert and not only a trek

Education Elevated raises most of its money by climbing. Each trekker takes on individual sponsors who pledge against every vertical foot of elevation gained, and a single expedition gains thousands of them. That is where the name comes from.

It is also a narrow door. Not everyone who wants to pay for a teacher in Chyangba is going to walk to Pikey Peak, and an expedition happens when an expedition happens, while the school year comes round every ten months whether or not anyone is on a mountain.

A concert is the same ledger reached by a different road. Sixty five dollars and an afternoon, instead of months of training and a fortnight in a tent.

The next expedition leaves on 20 September 2026 for Chyangba Village and Pikey Peak. Anyone can put their name to it, and anyone who would rather buy a ticket and hear a band can do that instead.

Questions