Welthy Honsinger Fisher (September 18, 1879 – December 16, 1980) was the American founder of World Education and World Literacy Canada.[2] She was married to Frederick Bohn Fisher, a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, missionary, author, and official in Methodist missionary and men's movements. She was an intellectual, activist, and feminist requested by her friend Mohandas Gandhi to begin Literacy House outside of Lucknow, India, at the age of 73.

Welthy graduated from Syracuse University in 1900. She was teaching at a high school and commuting to voice lessons in New York City when she attended a missionary meeting at Carnegie Hall. She suddenly changed her plans to become an opera singer and instead she sailed for China in 1906 to become the head mistress of the Bao Lin Girls’ School in Nanchang. She explained that “Modern China was coming into being amidst Old China, but it would be different from Modem America or Modern Europe. I wanted only to help my girls be the best they could.” When the school burned to the ground in 1911, Welthy returned to the United States and spoke to 600 groups over the next 15 months, collecting donations to rebuild.

In 1918 Welthy turned Bao Lin School over to her Chinese assistant and went to Europe as a member of the YWCA’s War Work Council. When World War I ended, she traveled, wrote, edited a church magazine, and lectured on her experiences. In 1924 she married the Methodist Bishop of India and Burma. When she was widowed in 1938, Welthy resumed writing, lecturing and traveling – to Africa, Europe, Latin America and Asia. She took classes, learning Hindi. In 1947 her travels took her back to India and Gandhi urged her to “come back and be with the villagers who have nothing… if you do not help the villages, you do not help India.”

In 1958 Welthy founded Literacy House in Lucknow, India. World Education saluted her by launching the Welthy Fisher Centennial Celebration at the UN Plaza on her 99th birthday. Welthy received many other tributes including, an honorary M.A. from Syracuse University in 1921 and an honorary Ph.D. in 1965, an honorary Ph.D. from Western College for Women in 1963, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding in 1964, the first Nehru Literacy Award in 1968, and the 1970 Humanitarian Award of the Variety Clubs International. In 1980 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Delhi University and the Government of India issued a commemorative postage stamp in her honor.