Rebuild Nepal Together

On April 25th, the 7.9 earthquake that shook Nepal and the aftershocks that followed hit hardest in poor rural villages across the country, the very places least able to afford the recovery.
Who is behind the effort?

Pawan Shakya, the brains and heart behind this project, runs his small family publishing business from Durbar Square, the historic center of Kathmandu. Immediately after the earthquake, Pawan embarked on self-funded relief projects aimed at some of the neediest villages. Derek Brown is an American photographer living in Kathmandu. Derek wanted to document Nepalis helping Nepalis, and reached out to his friend Pawan, whom he'd first met in 2013. Derek realized that he could help in the planning, funding and execution of Pawan's projects. Tyler Driscoll is a graphic designer based in San Francisco. Tyler met Derek couchsurfing in 2009, and brings the polish to our GoFundMe.
The plan:

Pawan intends to use your donations to improve the lives of over 500 earthquake-stricken Nepali villagers in 2 villages.
The villages were selected based on need, the ability of villagers to help each other, and their ability to help themselves. Very importantly, one young man from each village works for Pawan's family business. Having a person from inside each community not only provides valuable insight into issues and opportunities, but it also facilitates ongoing communication and monitoring that can help avoid all sorts of missteps. We believe that this local advantage, which is almost impossible to scale, allows us to provide cheaper and more directly effective assistance than efforts made by larger organizations.
Most of the funds will be spent for desperately needed secure shelter.  Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed or weakened by the earthquakes, and because of this extremely large need and difficult logistics, in countless cases relief has been slow to arrive. The coming monsoon brings essential rains but also great risks for rural areas, as they further weaken and destabilize damaged and new makeshift homes. Without money to purchase proper building materials, rural families are left with no choice but to accept these risks.
(formerly home to their pigs, Lali Kanchha and Thuli Maya now live here)

But shelter alone won't allow the villagers a return to normal life.  Many livestock and seeds--assets essential to these farmers' livelihoods--were destroyed in the earthquake.  Money from this fundraiser will be spent to replenish livestock and provide seeds for planting, as well as help restart small businesses to get the villages earning again. 
The villages
(Ranipauwa from across the valley, even houses that look okay are not. Nearly all are damaged beyond repair.)

Roughly 1.5 hours drive northwest of Kathmandu, Ranipauwa Village was almost totally destroyed by the earthquake, with essentially none of the houses inhabitable or even repairable. Pawan chose to build his first bamboo relief house in Ranipauwa.   With your donations, Pawan intends to build 45 more bamboo relief houses in Ranipauwa, which will provide shelter for 250 to 300 villagers. The villagers themselves will do most of the construction with the provided materials, helping instill value in the shelter and keeping costs low for each home.
(first bamboo relief houses)

The family living in the first bamboo relief house had no seed and had lost 4 of their 5 goats. Derek and Pawan supplied them with seed for planting and 2 female goats. One day they were lost and without a way forward, and the next they were planting rice and tending goats. Funds will meet other basic needs of the villagers as identified by Pawan's trusted employee and the teams on the ground building the houses.
(children of Ranipawa)

3.5 hours northeast of Kathmandu, through treacherous terrain, is Chhap Village. Of 250 houses in the area, only 1 remained inhabitable after the earthquakes.

Chhap was fortunate in that the villagers had already planted their corn prior to the earthquakes, but all available storage areas are now being used as living spaces for the now homeless villagers, leaving no room for the corn when it is harvested. Without storage, the corn will be ruined. In Chhap, with your donations, Pawan intends to build 60 bamboo relief houses to house up to 270 to 300 residents and also act as storage for corn.
We will also help restore livelihoods in Chhap.  Som Bahadur Tamang raised and sold chickens prior to the earthquake, but the earthquake destroyed his chicken house. We will build a new bamboo chicken house, as well as provide chicks. We also intend to replace 3 teams of oxen that were killed during the earthquake. The teams are used not only by the families that own them, but by neighboring farmers as well.
Pawan has been using the money from his family's business to fund his relief and rebuilding so far.  With your help, he can increase the reach and impact of his efforts. That's where you come in, together we can rebuild Nepal.

Additional information:

Any money remaining after the building and light provisioning of the proposed 105 houses and proposed livelihoods activities will go toward additional livehoods opportunities for the villagers, as well as possibly additional bamboo relief houses for other residents of Chhap village whose homes were destroyed.

We are happy to provide rewards, so that you can take pride in the support you are providing and share our work with your friends and colleagues.  Neither Pawan nor I will be taking any compensation at any point--Pawan is doing the calendar printing at cost and there will be no charge for my images.  Since some of the rewards do carry cost (e.g., mugs, t-shirts, large prints), do let us know if you do not want them.  But really we are happy to incentivize you to give more and to be proud of your contribution.

Any Nepalis hired by Pawan for the effort will be paid a fair wage. I'm happy to answer or direct to Pawan absolutely any question you might have.

A few of the rewards: