Rebuilding Nepal after Earthquake

Nepal Earthquake Facts:
As you all probably know 7.9 Richter earthquake on April 25th followed by over 100 after shocks (a huge 7.4 Richter among those) has left Nepal paralyzed & crippled. Over 8 thousand lives have been lost and twice as many injured. Over 2.8 million Nepalese have been displaced, many brought to streets. Outside Kathmandu, in remote villages, the situation is even worse. The already poor people have been robbed off of their food, shelter, health and well being. The Natural disaster of this magnitude has shown no mercy and proved its wrath.


What we are doing:

Nepal needs help in many areas. Some are immediate, others are long term. There are many parties, from big international relief agencies to individuals who have stepped forward to help in anyway they could. Rather than taking on the broad area of relief efforts, we believe that we can best help by focusing on a couple of areas specific to education. These efforts are going to be somewhat long term.

Schools are still closed as there were many completely destroyed or damaged. We will adopt some village schools that were damaged during the earthquake and help them rebuild. We will also provide uniforms and books for the children.
Being homeless and in the tent or in open shelters, several social situations have emerged. Many cases of rapes have been reported and with a lure for better life, women trafficking has reported to increase as well.   Girl education has truly been lacking in remote villages, which is making the situation even worse. Taking advantage of this situation, we will instill some form of education incentive/program for women and girl students. Empowering women with education is the best way to the development of the torn down villages and the nation as a whole benefits from it. Educating women changes the whole scenario. They tend to have healthier families,  tend to have fewer children, are not pushed to get married right away and they work to support their families.


How we are doing it?

We are working with a very good friend of ours, Gandhi Nepal in this initiative. Gandhi is a nurse by profession and was working in Australia. After the Earthquake in Nepal, he could not sit back and bear the burden of reading and watching the suffering on the News. As soon as he arrived to Kathmandu, he left on his own for the remote villages outside Kathmandu where medical help was in dire need. He has been hiking around these villages for a couple weeks and reaching some of them before anyone else from the recovery or relief agencies got to them. From that day he has been taking us to those villages, to the plight of those people’s suffering, to the challenges that loom large over them and to his own help, care and service he has provided to hundreds. He shows us that amidst all the devastation how big of a heart the people of those villages have. They do not shy away from sharing even their last meal and their only shelter to cover their head. In his 10 days hike he went to several villages, treated people’s injury, listened to their stories and probably became their hope. During this time, he has also established some very dependable contacts at ground zero that he is working with to provide relief in whatever way he could in these remote villages. We cannot help but admire our friend of his selfless service and we are partnering with him to help with this cause. You can follow his journey in his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/summitway87?fref=ts&ref=br_tf


Everyone helping to co-ordinate these activities are volunteers, so 100% of the donations will be utilized for rebuilding the schools and providing education for women specific population. Again, this is a a somewhat longterm project. We will be identifying the needs in the next few months and we are looking to utilize the funds within a year. The updates regarding how we have utilized the funds will be available as we progress through.


I hope you can help in any way you can. Any donations large or small will certainly be appreciated and will be utilized directly in these efforts. Also, please realize that this is our individual collection effort to help the earthquake victims of Nepal and we are not affiliated with any agencies or not-for profit corporations.


Thank you and god bless you!!


Binaya & Pinku Manandhar

North Carolina , USA