What began as a tin-roofed, three-room shack gradually evolved into a 3-acre education center for young women in a rural village in India near the city of Kolkata—where the school’s Lompoc-based founder was born and raised.
“I grew up with my mother telling me, ‘Finish the food on your plate, they’re starving children outside the window.’ And there were,” Deepa Willingham told the Sun. “I would say, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to take care of children like this.’ Except, … I didn’t do anything. [At age] 40, it didn’t bother me. At 50, it didn’t bother me. When I turned 60, it really bothered me. I felt ashamed of myself.
“I felt that I’d lived on this planet for 60 years, used mother nature’s resources, and hadn’t done anything to make the planet a little better,” said the longtime Santa Barbara County resident.
Willingham worked in the hospital industry for several years before joining the Rotary Club of Santa Ynez Valley during the early 2000s.
Starting in 2003, the retiree began working with the Rotary Club of Calcutta Metropolitan on a project that enveloped the next two decades of her life. About 20 miles outside of Kolkata city limits in the village of Piyali Junction, Willingham and other Rotarians developed the PACE (Promise of Assurance to Children Everywhere) Learning Center thanks to grant funding.
“Within six months, I had 85 girls. And then from there, it took off,” said Willingham, who added that the school—which serves elementary and middle school ages—provided the first formal education opportunity for many girls in the area. She explained that the project quickly doubled as an expansive infrastructure effort that impacted the entire village.
Due to a lack of clean water wells, Willingham said, many of her school’s earliest students had worms. Although the school had a clean well and it offered worm medication, drinking dirty water over the weekend would put these students back at square one, she explained.
“I decided this wasn’t working, so I wrote a Rotary grant and got $18,000 and went and put in 17 water wells in and around where the girls lived. This was 2007,” Willingham said. “In 2009, I did another grant application and got from the Rotary Foundation a 3-H Grant.”
The three H’s stand for health, hunger, and humanity, respectively. The Rotary Foundation launched this program in 1978 to undertake large-scale humanitarian projects.
“With $390,000, we put in 40 water wells, 400 toilets, 10,000 fruit trees, built roads, built an outpatient clinic, [funded] an ambulance. So, the whole infrastructure was changed,” said Willingham, who added that the project became a reference point for other Rotarians aiming to accomplish similar humanitarian initiatives.
“It has become a model. Rotarians from worldwide are going there, trying to see how it has been done,” she said.
In 2014, Willingham was among 10 women honored at the White House for their work in community development and global humanitarian efforts.
While her nonprofit, PACE Universal, accepts donations year-round to support the learning center, Willingham periodically organizes in-person fundraiser events close to home on the Central Coast.
On Aug. 31, the Pork Palace—at 1503 S. Highway 101 between Buellton and Gaviota—will host a fundraiser with dinner, wine, live music, and a silent and live auction to support PACE.
Willingham said it costs $420 total to support one PACE student for an entire school year, which includes two meals on campus each day.
“That pays for everything. It pays for their food; for their medication; their teacher’s salary,” she said. “All you have to do is give up going to a fancy restaurant in the United States two times, and you have changed a human life.”
For more information, visit paceuniversal.org.
Highlight
• To help Cabrillo High School in Lompoc upgrade its field and track, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians recently committed to a $500,000 matching grant toward the school’s $8 million stadium improvement project. The donation will offer a dollar-for-dollar match of all funds raised moving forward, up to $500,000. “We hope this grant will boost community support for the project and help the fundraising campaign achieve its goal,” Kenneth Kahn, tribal chairman, said in an Aug. 19 release.
Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood wrote Spotlight this week. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 7, 2025.