Alastair Belson
Alastair's Nepal Post-Earthquake Volunteer Work
Fundraising for All Hands and Hearts (UK) Trust
Story
The 2015 Nepal Earthquake killed over 8000 people and injured more than twice as many, occurring at 11:56am on Saturday April 25th. With a magnitude of 7.8, it left thousands of people homeless, with entire villages flattened across many districts in the country. A second major earthquake occurred at 12:50pm on Tuesday May 12th with a magnitude of 7.3. At least 153 people were killed by this second earthquake and more than 3200 were injured.
When I recently heard about the All Hands volunteer program to help with reconstruction of the area, I decided to offer my time to help rebuild a small part of Nepal severely affected by the earthquake. I'll arrive on site on 3rd May and the project will involve building two new schools (some more details below). All Hands relies on volunteers providing whatever skills they have to help complete the tasks laid out and I'll find out my exact duties once I've arrived.
It costs All Hands roughly $25 per day to cover the shelter, food, tools, materials, transport and management that make the volunteers' contributions possible, and this is where I'm asking you to make a donation to their cause: I put in the time, you help support the project - whatever amount you can afford. I will be on site for about 15 working days and hope to raise enough money to cover all the costs they incur to let us work, and more hopefully, by fund raising here. I am covering all my own travel costs and all donations here go directly to All Hands and their cause.
Thank you for donating in advance. Please share this page with everyone you can! Here are some more details from All Hands on the project:
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PROGRAM DETAILS:
The magnitude of the earthquake has resulted in thousands of extremely dangerous structures at risk of collapse. We have previously undertaken lots of demolition and rubble removal which has enabled communities to take the next step and start the rebuilding process. Recently, we have been re-building schools! We are currently using Room to Read designs to build earthquake resistant schools. The Happy Hearts Foundation have partnered with AHV to build two new schools in Thulo Sindhupalchowk. Our school rebuild project is an overall effort to build new schools and repair partially damaged schools in remote locations across Nepal. Thousands of children are currently out of school and are missing a significant part of their education due to the number of schools that were destroyed or made unsafe in the earthquakes. We have a highly-experienced team of construction and engineering specialists who will ensure that each school we build or repair is to the highest, earthquake resistant quality possible. We are rebuilding two schools in this area - Shree Kakaling Harisddhi Secondary School and Chamuna Devi Secondary School.
Shree Kakaling Harisddhi Secondary School is a government school with an enrollment of around 600 students, 500 in actual attendance. Unfortunately, during the quake, 2 buildings collapsed of which 7 were classrooms and 2 were supporting rooms. Chamuna Devi Secondary School has 130 students enrolled with approx. 80 in actual attendance and teaches students from Grade 1 up to Grade 8. Currently, there are no safe, permanent structures for this school in terms of classrooms or support structures – classes are now conducted in TLCs uphill of the old site. Before the earthquake, there were 9 classrooms + 2 supporting structures which included a JICA steel superstructure building. Although the stone masonry collapsed, the structure is still intact with repaired CGI walls which is now being used for storage.
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When I recently heard about the All Hands volunteer program to help with reconstruction of the area, I decided to offer my time to help rebuild a small part of Nepal severely affected by the earthquake. I'll arrive on site on 3rd May and the project will involve building two new schools (some more details below). All Hands relies on volunteers providing whatever skills they have to help complete the tasks laid out and I'll find out my exact duties once I've arrived.
It costs All Hands roughly $25 per day to cover the shelter, food, tools, materials, transport and management that make the volunteers' contributions possible, and this is where I'm asking you to make a donation to their cause: I put in the time, you help support the project - whatever amount you can afford. I will be on site for about 15 working days and hope to raise enough money to cover all the costs they incur to let us work, and more hopefully, by fund raising here. I am covering all my own travel costs and all donations here go directly to All Hands and their cause.
Thank you for donating in advance. Please share this page with everyone you can! Here are some more details from All Hands on the project:
***********
PROGRAM DETAILS:
The magnitude of the earthquake has resulted in thousands of extremely dangerous structures at risk of collapse. We have previously undertaken lots of demolition and rubble removal which has enabled communities to take the next step and start the rebuilding process. Recently, we have been re-building schools! We are currently using Room to Read designs to build earthquake resistant schools. The Happy Hearts Foundation have partnered with AHV to build two new schools in Thulo Sindhupalchowk. Our school rebuild project is an overall effort to build new schools and repair partially damaged schools in remote locations across Nepal. Thousands of children are currently out of school and are missing a significant part of their education due to the number of schools that were destroyed or made unsafe in the earthquakes. We have a highly-experienced team of construction and engineering specialists who will ensure that each school we build or repair is to the highest, earthquake resistant quality possible. We are rebuilding two schools in this area - Shree Kakaling Harisddhi Secondary School and Chamuna Devi Secondary School.
Shree Kakaling Harisddhi Secondary School is a government school with an enrollment of around 600 students, 500 in actual attendance. Unfortunately, during the quake, 2 buildings collapsed of which 7 were classrooms and 2 were supporting rooms. Chamuna Devi Secondary School has 130 students enrolled with approx. 80 in actual attendance and teaches students from Grade 1 up to Grade 8. Currently, there are no safe, permanent structures for this school in terms of classrooms or support structures – classes are now conducted in TLCs uphill of the old site. Before the earthquake, there were 9 classrooms + 2 supporting structures which included a JICA steel superstructure building. Although the stone masonry collapsed, the structure is still intact with repaired CGI walls which is now being used for storage.
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