Nepal Earthquake

Since the April 25th earthquake last year, IN supporters demonstrated such generosity and care for the people of Nepal by raising over £44,000. This enabled us to mobilise quickly and distribute relief in the form of food and rigid shelter materials to hundreds of families and households in the remote and mountainous areas.

I had the privilege of travelling to Nepal this March with colleagues from the US. We went to oversee the use of the funds allocated to help the immediate relief. The money raised from our appeal was employed effectively. However to our astonishment, as we travelled throughout the district of Sindhulpalchowk, many villages in the mountainous areas still were living in temporary shelter. We learned that almost 80% of families lost their homes in this area, either being partially or completely destroyed. Sadly there seems to be little action in reconstruction of homes and the government particularly has come under criticism for failing to use the $4.1 billion aid money pledged across the world. People are either waiting for support, or going it alone. If people start to rebuild their own homes yet don’t have the funds to finish, they will get no government aid at all.

“International Needs is kicking off a livelihoods programme to rebuild family income through support loans to purchase new livestock or by purchasing equipment needed to start a business.”

Despite the slowness of government response we are confident there are other agencies helping the reconstruction of homes.
At International Needs we recognised the need to start rebuilding family livelihoods.

A devastating fact of the April 2015 quake was the loss of livestock and therefore the loss of income for the smallholder farming families. In some villages almost all the livestock were killed. Without income support and livelihoods many people are leaving the villages and going to live in Kathmandu, or the men are departing Nepal for labouring work in the middle east. Stay posted for news and information about the Livelihoods programme, so you can be involved in helping us with this important support and assistance to families.

National Director, Danny Morris