This classroom is dedicated to Cindy Cummings Neprash and her husband, Brian Neprash. Cindy grew up in the idyllic small town of Southboro, Massachusetts, and attended school there from kindergarten through high school. Cindy’s mother, an avid reader and writer, and father, a mathematician and puzzle-solver, consistently embodied and underscored the importance of education. As a result, Cindy knew from an early age that education was essential to ensure that she become a skilled and confident employee. After receiving a degree from Salem State University, with an education major and a business minor, Cindy began her career with the YMCA, a worldwide non-profit organization. Several local leaders with whom Cindy had networked quickly recognized her passion for helping people, and Cindy was soon offered an opportunity that would shape her 32-year career in human resources management.
Brian, a veteran of the United States Navy, was born in the Badlands of North Dakota. His parents’ career with the National Park Service took Brian’s family to 48 of the 50 states, eventually settling in North Dakota, where Brian’s grandmother was a respected grade school teacher. As a 40-year educator, Brian’s grandmother shared her love of education with her grandson and underscored its unparalleled ability to expand one’s understanding of the world.
As part of a milestone birthday celebration, in 2014 Cindy and Brian travelled to South Africa to discover more about Universal Promise, the organisation her sister, Martha T. Cummings, founded. After touring a school’s classrooms and grounds, they learned that the school did not yet have a clean and unfettered water supply, essential to building and maintaining strong minds and healthy bodies in students. They soon made clean water their mission by creating vinyl flowers from recycled record albums and selling the one-of-a-kind flowers to hundreds of customers back in the United States. In a handful of months, Cindy, Brian, and eager supporters raised the required funds to install the first school water collection, purification, and filtration system in the region. Together, through creativity and perseverance, Cindy and Brian embraced and helped enforce the UP vision of a proper and holistic education for the children of Nomathamsanqa.
Honoured by Universal Promise