Until the Megaquake of 2015, COMMITTED had been helping schools at our project sites with needs they identified in their SIPs (School Improvement Plans) and with Social Business for Education projects, namely fishery. We had been making headway with all that as you can see from our 2013-14 and 2014-15 annual reports.
Following the earthquake, we changed our focus, providing emergency relief soon after the calamity, later providing additional support to the community, and planning education programs for the children to introduce some degree of normalcy to their lives and thus helping them a little with their psychological recovery from the trauma. We are conducting music, sports, reading and writing programs at the Temporary Learning Centers in the village.
Most recently, COMMITTED also began the reconstruction of Taltuleshwori School.
Lacking in funds, Taltuleshwori will NOT have all the rooms that the plan calls for but construction is slated for completion by May 2016. So for obvious reasons, we are NOT able to help the other schools — Raithane School, Chilaune School, Kumveshwori School and Saat Kanya School — with reconstruction. We just haven’t managed to raise enough funds.
…And to say nothing of the reconstruction of the 594 of the 600 houses in Thangpalkot destroyed by the megaquake and how that has affected, and will continue to affect, the lives of the children of Thanpalkot (and others)….
We estimate that COMMITTED will need roughly US$150,000 to fund the infrastructure-related work of all the schools.
By the time Taltuleshwori School is ready for normal school, the students will have lost almost a whole year of schooling. What of the students attending the other schools? We have about 900 school-going children in Thangpalkot. 175 attend Taltuleshwori school.
How much longer will the education of Thangpalkot children be disrupted?
In spite of providing hardly any assistance of note for the last ten months, leaving most of the millions of victims directly or indirectly affected by the calamity to fend for themselves firstly the unrelenting downpours of summer monsoon and secondly the brutal hill and mountain winters, The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), the government wing entrusted with reconstruction, today asked “earthquake victims not to begin housing reconstruction in quake-affected districts unless the authority provides government announced aid and technical assistance.” (Have I said the State of Nepal is a State without a conscience?)
But as I have already stated above, COMMITTED has already started with school reconstruction efforts in Thangpalkot. Unfortunately, donations to our cause have pretty much ceased and funding sources appear to have pretty much dried up as well.
However, you could still donate to our cause! Thangpalkot children still need your support!
Click here or on the image below and donate to the Earthquake Funds.
If you can’t donate, you can still help us by promoting us! Share, on social media, this and other blog posts about our work and help us reach a wider audience and potential donors!
- If you would like to share blog posts about our work since the earthquake, click here to go to the page containing links to all the relevant blog posts.
- If you would like to share blog posts about our schools and their conditions, click here to go to the school profile page.
- If you would like to share stories of some of our students, click here to go to the page containing links to stories of students we support.
- Or if you want to share my personal stories with your friends to convince them to support our work, click here.
- Or if you want to share a post about why I joined COMMITTED and why you should support local non-profits, click here.
And when you do, I would appreciate your letting me know by tagging me to the post, if we are “friends” or if we are connected.
Thank you in advance!
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References
‘Do Not build houses without government assistance.’ (Is it just me or is that proclamation as sinister as it sounds?)
