Karuna-Shechen Earthquake Relief &

Rehabilitation Program

Two major earthquakes measuring magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.3 struck Nepal on 25 April and 12 May 2015 wrecking havoc.

Hundreds of aftershocks and tremors added to the destruction.

712,725 houses were either damaged or destroyed

8,856 lost their lives

23,996 classrooms in

4,786 schools were completely destroyed

Earthquake Relief OperationsTwo million people were displaced by the 7.8 and 7.3 magnitude earthquakes that struck Nepal on April and May 2015, according to the National Population Census of Ministry of Home Affairs.

The UN pleaded for 423 million US$ to respond to emergency needs, but this amount didn’t come in time, or in full.

Given the magnitude of the destruction and the immediate needs of the people, Karuna-Shechen went right to work. We set up our own intervention priorities based on a practical and workable response taking into account the resources available and our capacity.

Three population groups were affected by the earthquake: •People who have access and connections to aid and assistance; •Communities and people who have the possibility of access and connections to assistance networks; •Communities that have always been in the fringe of development and have absolutely no access to any immediate possibility of help.

This last category made up the largest segment of the stricken population, scattered in remote small villages in the affected districts.

Karuna-Shechen’s mission has always been to address the needs of those who are most vulnerable or can not get help. Despite the huge challenge this poses after the earthquakes, our team in Nepal is dedicated to continue to implement this vision and, in this spirit, we chose to assist the third segment of the affected population, and among them, the most neglected.

Karuna-Shechen’s PartnersShechen Clinic & Hospice

•Since 2000, Shechen Clinic & Hospice has been providing quality medical care to the people of Boudhanath, where there is a large migrant community from the Himalayan region of Nepal and Tibet. •The clinic is a non-profit, charitable unit that serves the poor and deprived population who cannot afford treatment in private hospitals. •Every year, Shechen Clinic treats over 40,000 patients through its various medical departments: the Out Patient Department, Mobile Medical Outreach Clinic, Pathology and X-ray labs, USG, DOTS Center, Dental Department, Gynecology and Reproductive Health, Himalayan Indigenous Medicine (also known as Tibetan Medicine), Homeopathy, and the hospice.

• Immediately after the earthquake, Shechen Clinic mobilized two mobile medical outreach teams to visit daily the most affected villages in the valley and peripheries to assist them with basic health care needs and distribute emergency relief materials.

Shechen Monastery Eco Group

• The Shechen Eco Group was founded in November 2011 by the abbot and monks of Shechen Monastery. • It promotes and participates in environmentally sustainable activities within and outside the monastery. • Members of the Shechen Eco Group are monks who are either studying or teaching in Shechen Monastery. • Shechen Clinic & Hospice trained 49 monks from the Shechen Eco group as Advanced First-Aiders. The

training equipped the monks with the techniques for giving basic life and trauma support and for managing the sick and the injured in a medical emergency or a disaster. These monks were very active during the post-earthquake period, providing treatment on the spot and distributing emergency relief materials in remote villages.

LOOKS Nepal (Literacy Oriented Organization for Knowledge & Skills Nepal)

• Established in 2013, LOOKS Nepal is a grassroots non-governmental organization based in Banepa. Before the earthquake of April 2015, LOOKS Nepal was predominantly working in the education sector, supporting community schools through various activities in the Kavre district.

• After the earthquake, LOOKS Nepal partnered with Karuna-Shechen to reach very remote and rural villages in the Kavre, Sindhupalchok, Dolakha and Ramechhap districts.

• LOOKS Nepal mobilized a large number of extremely motivated volunteers to help with the relief distribution. The volunteers were able to go on data collection missions and traveled to remote villages to distribute and purchase materials required for relief distribution,.

• Using its team of volunteers, in-depth research, and local support, LOOKS Nepal easily prioritized earthquake survivors according to the degree of material and mental loss they had suffered so that we were able to identify the most needy and help them directly.

INHURED INTERNATIONAL [International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development]

• INHURED International works with UN Centre for Human Rights; UNESCO, UNHCR; OHCHR; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; Asian Human Rights Commission; The Hague Appeal for Peace; South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR); South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC), Oxford University-Summer School on Forced Migration; Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration; The Tibet Fund; Lutheran World Federation; ActionAid Nepal; National Election Observation Committee (NEOC), Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN); Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL); Peoples’ SAARC, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE); Accountability Watch Committee (AWC) and all major human rights, relief and development institutions based in Nepal and abroad.

• Though NEOC (Nepal Election Observation Committee) is only mandated to oversee and supervise elections, the organization agreed to allow INHURED International use of its network around the country to gain valuable information regarding the level of destruction and help required in remote villages. With this valuable assistance, INHURED International was able to supply relief materiala efficiently to most of the earthquake-affected districts in a very short span of time.

• INHURED International has been a front-runner in the human rights movement in Nepal and the region. The organization represented various UN forums relating to human rights including SAARC, the UN High Level Dialogue on Migration, and UNHCR-NGO Annual Consultations. INHURED International is a founding trustee member organization of NEOC, the National Election Observation Committee, a watchdog organization that is responsible for monitoring elections in Nepal. NEOC has a network spanning all corners of the country and has the capacity to mobilize teams in every election polling district.

15 of 75 districts severely affected

Earthquake- Affected Areas

Karuna-Shechen’s Earthquake Relief Activities

Districts reached : 15 (worst affected districts) VDCs* reached : 147 Villages reached : 574 Households reached : 37,715 Population benefitted : 200,829 Patients Treated in Medical Clinics: 8,146

Relief Materials Distributed Tarpaulin Tents : 15,445 piece Rice : 604,550 kg Beaten Rice : 12,820 kg Pulse : 46,636 kg Salt : 24,538 kg Sugar : 34,925 kg Soap : 69,041 piece Cooking Oil : 20,621 liters Water Purifiers : 340 pieces ORS Packets : 1,984 packets Noodles : 4,840 packets

(*Village District Committees)

Earthquake Emergency Relief Delivery Data (by Partners)

Organization Districts Villages Households Population

Shechen Clinic & Hospice

8 72 2,822 9,633

Shechen Eco Group 9 115 7,609 45,391

LOOKS Nepal 5 101 4,420 25,055

INHURED International 12 286 22,864 120,750

Relief Distribution DetailsDistrict Details 

 Medical Relief Material Distributed

 

DistrictHouses Destroy

ed

Schools/ Classroom

s Destroyed

VDCs Reache

d

Villages Reache

d

Families

Reached

Population

Benefitted

Medical Clinics

Organized

Tarpaulin

Tents

Rice (kg)

Beaten Rice (kg)

Pulse (kg)

Soap (piece)

Salt (kg)

Sugar (kg)

Oil (liters)

Water Purifier (piece)

ORS Packets

Noodles

(Packets)

Sindulpalchok 66,636 546/4,019 19 88 5,998 33,088 - 2,920 112,400 1,985 9,106 14,036 5,330 6,994 4,052 100 - 1,940

Gorkha 72,955 495/3,074 6 14 2,166 12,238 - 796 20,875 55 1,670 2,890 835 1,670 1,045 - -  

Ramechhap 39,916 151/581 14 46 3,600 21,428 - 1,605 73,425 900 4,459 8,603 2,427 4,159 2,697 240 - -

Bhaktapur 27,954 137/339 5 7 238 715 7 - - - - - - - - - - -

Dhading 84,405 587/3086 8 40 3,177 16,744 - 3,376 69,550 1,000 4,448 4,630 2,488 3,810 2,105 - - -

Nuwakot 79,962 485 / 3445 18 60 4680 28,538 - 1,642 67,000 5,110 5,015 8,808 2,334 4,424 2,334 - 336 2,990

Lalitpur 25,508 149/780 6 6 275 975 6 40 750   750 - - - - - - -

Dolakha 52,000 363/2496 14 94 6,556 29,617 - 1,821 90,500 690 6,741 10,663 3,243 5,030 3,040 - - -

Kathmandu 99,526 187/1034 18 43 2,021 7,778 43 28 3,200 - 420 156 228 476 156   150 -

Makwanpur 37,418 361/844 2 13 903 5,522 - 500 14,375 - 1,150 2,500 675 1,150 675 - - -

Kavre 73,647 548/1828 19 88 4,207 22,601 - 512 70,650 - 4,785 6,375 2,836 2,077 1,277 - 1,168 -

Sinduli 28,225 451/928 1 4 361 1,939 - - 10,125 - 800 1,620 405 800 405 - - -

Okhaldunga 13,138 228/894 2 17 629 3,538 - 410 15,550 - 950 1,940 697 675 485 - - -

Solukhumbu 11,087 146/346 6 6 518 2,977 - 400 15,000 - 1,600 1,600 560 1,200 460 - - -

Rasuwa 11,635 98/928 9 48 2,386 13,131 - 1,395 41,150 3,080 4,742 5,220 2,480 2,460 1,890 - 330 -

Total 724,012 4932/24,622

128 574 37,715 200,829 56 15,445 604,550 12,820 46,636 69,041 24,538 34,925 20,621 340 1,984 4,930

Relief Delivery Operations

Relief Delivery Operations II

Earthquake Rehabilitation Program

Why Karuna-Shechen Developed this Strategy:

• If the villages of Nepal had food security essentials in place, the earthquake-affected areas might not have needed such extensive deliveries of food relief assistance;

• If there had been a network of community first-aiders within reach, the pain of many more could have possibly been eased, and more lives could have been saved;

• If local schools provided better education and facilitated positive exposure to children to hands-on, everyday life skills, the children would not be a burden, but an asset;

• If their energy needs did not lead to deforestation, the mountains above them might not have crashed down upon them, and their water sources would have probably stayed dependable;

• If parents were aware of the perils of sending their children away to far-off lands to “escape from life at home”, and they had the means to resist and counter the lure, they might not have lost so many youngsters to the human trade;

and, • If they were prepared for any disaster, they might not have been caught so off-

guard.

The Basic Situation in Nepal:

•A majority of rural Nepal is a collection of small, scattered and remote settlements; •A majority of the Nepalese population live in rural Nepal; •A majority of this rural population are essentially agriculturists; •Agriculture is by far the largest employer in Nepal, and the provides this population the ready opportunity to be self-sufficient in food and basic necessities; •This segment of the population is also the best-placed to be largely self-reliant for its essential and basic rural needs; •Any strategy for realizing well-being, particularly for this majority, needs to be tailored to the geographic, topographic, demographic, social, and economic characteristics of the area; • 

Earthquake Rehabilitation Program - continued

Guidelines for Karuna-Shechen Intervention:

We will implement an all-inclusive mid-term rehabilitation intervention strategy involving various sectors: •The core component of the intervention is empowerment and capacity building, including training and networking, using on-the-ground, hands-on, practical methodologies. •One project site will be selected in each of the 12 districts of Gorkha, Sindhupalanchowk, Rasuwa, Kavrepalanchowk, Dolokha, Ramechhap, Makwanpur, Okhaldhunga, Sindhuli, Dhading, Nuwakot and Solukhumbu; •Each project site will consist of 1 village or a selection of 1 sub-site per intervention sector within its surrounding area that will fulfill the criteria of all the various interventions. The project site will then be adopted as an intervention area; •Each village will ideally be made up of around 100 households; •One primary school (KG to grade 6), the building of which has been damaged and become inhabitable due to the earthquake, will be selected in this project site for intervention; •The intervention period will be from July 12, 2015 to December 31, 2017; •The primary objective is to create successful model villages that include all the various sectors as equal contributors into the well-being process, and to create a pool of local, on-the-spot trainers to spread their expertise and knowledge into neighboring villages and trigger a self-multiplying effect. •At the end of the intervention period, all programs will be handed over to local community based organizations and/or the respective local government units.

Earthquake Rehabilitation Project - continued

This segment of the intervention programs ensures that families produce and have access to a low-cost, nutritious, and complete range of seasonal vegetables and staple foods, by re-establishing, promoting, and supporting:

• Sustenance farming, including establishment of household kitchen gardens, together with natural/organic composting and pest management;

• Cultivation of staple crops; • Animal husbandry; • Watershed replenishment, maintenance and management; • Bio-forestry; • Food storage improvement techniques; • The cultivation of cash crops for added income where suitable.

Activities include:

•Periodic training and capacity-development of farmers, covering all aspects of agriculture, animal husbandry, watershed management and bio-forestry, using local bio-resources and sustainable natural and organic practices; •Supporting the setting-up of seedling nurseries, establishing revolving funds to support cultivation of staple food crops, animal husbandry, and cash crops; •Supporting the re-establishing of watersheds and bio-forests; •Re-training a core group of trained farmers from each village as trainers; •Catalyzing the formation of a committee of village representatives to officiate on behalf of the village in activities related to this intervention program, and in the future; •Establishing community-managed revolving funds to support the cultivation of staple crops, animal husbandry, cash crops, etc.; •Ensuring continuous follow-up by deploying visiting monitoring staff as well as by locally based inspectors to check if the objectives of the intervention are being met.

Food Security

The most pressing need in Nepal’s medical sector is pre-hospital emergency medical response and medicine and primary healthcare service.

In the cities and towns, people primarily use regular taxis to transport the sick to the hospital. Calling an ambulance for an emergency evacuation to a hospital will only bring a vehicle labeled “ambulance” in red with no medical assistants, as the concept of paramedics is almost non-existent.

In rural areas, the situation is more acute, with ill-equipped and ill-manned medical outposts located many hours or days walk away. Thus patients do not go to rural medical units until a medical case is truly advanced.

How can we address this vacuum realistically and find a solution? The most practical and cost effective alternative has been to train selected villagers as community first-aiders to respond to pre-hospital medical emergencies and primary health care needs in their locality.

Since 2012, over 500 community advanced first-aiders have been trained, and their usefulness was proven beyond a doubt, particularly in the recent post-earthquake scenario.

This intensive advanced first-aid training program is designed to progressively create a nation-wide network of community emergency health responders who can dispense on-the-spot pre-hospital medical care in isolated villages of rural Nepal.

Activities include:  • Training and deployment of Advanced Community First Aiders; • Advanced First Aid Training for the AFAs on adolescent, maternity, and child health.

Health

80% of the student population study in government/community schools. However, these schools often fail to motivate students and the community.

Two very significant reasons contribute to this: 1.Lack of effective monitoring due to the remoteness of the schools; 2.The government does not provide adequate funding or teachers to community schools that depend on it for support.

Karuna-Shechen’s support will ensure that the local community becomes an integral part of the equation, and will help the schools to become working models for the government to emulate and replicate in other schools. Our goal is that our successes will bring practical changes to some of the flawed policies in the government’s approach to education.Activities include: •Continuously engaging the local community to teach and encourage them to play an active monitoring role; engaging the school management committee to ensure that they fulfill their role in the school’s management, and enlisting the faculty to fulfill their respective duties; •In addition to the main curriculum, introducing students to local vocational trades to inculcate a deep respect for all skills, trades, and livelihoods; •Providing financial support for additional teachers, books and stationery, uniforms, teaching materials, sporting goods, etc.; •Supporting the construction of a temporary bamboo 6-8 room structure that can be erected in a week or so for schools that do not have habitable classrooms ; •Supporting the fabrication or procurement of classroom desks and benches; •Supporting the construction of permanent toilets for boys and girls; •Supporting the construction of a permanent rainwater harvesting or water supply systems; •Engaging the government to bring about a positive change in their policies in education.

EDUCATION

56.7% of Nepal’s population do not have electricity in their homes and, instead, rely on kerosene oil lamps and wood fires.

The use of wood fires indoors continuously can lead to serious chest and eye illnesses and can be a fire hazard. In the past, we have successfully installed solar lighting systems to eliminate these problems. Solar also provides light at night for children to study and do their homework, and thus improves education.

Nepal’s geography and topography make stand-alone solar home lighting systems and local community micro-hydro power generating systems more preferable options than using larger power-generating alternatives. Stand-alone solar home lighting systems have a huge practical advantage over all other alternatives in many isolated regions of Nepal where there are no streams and rivers.

Our program aims to establish, not only a workable model for the area, but also a replicable model and network that can be used throughout Nepal. It emphases empowerment of women by giving them a leading role in the project.

Activities include:

•Training and capacity building for two women from each selected village to become solar technicians and solar entrepreneurs; •Solar electrifying 100 households in one village in each project area; •Supporting the creation of a solar workshop in each of these villages for the trained women.

Rural Solar Electrification

Nepal has the ill fame of being high up on the list of countries afflicted by human trafficking and unsafe migration.

The current earthquake-affected districts have become even more vulnerable because of various factors: the loss of the bread winner or supporting member in the family, sudden detrimental change in the economic status due to material losses, escape of many convicts serving time for trafficking due to the collapse of jails, and so on.

A surge in human trafficking has been clearly detected in the aftermath of the earthquake, and counter measures are being taken. Most efforts are defensive in nature and focus on apprehending the victim and perpetrator. Gaping holes have been exposed at the root of the problem.

Our program aims at empowering and enabling communities, strengthening community and family bonds and using local, regional, and national networking. We will work together with other intervention sectors to address the problem at its very source in order to weaken and destroy the lure that exposes potential victims to trafficking.   Activities include: Using our local organizing skills and partners, we will offer intensive and protracted training, awareness, and networking in communities, schools, government units, social groups, village committees, and individuals. Our economic and education projects as mentioned above are part of this intervention as well.

Counter Human Trafficking

This important intervention aims at strengthening capacities of communities, village committees, and individuals, so that they will be prepared for, and can cope and respond to, unforeseen sudden natural or man-made disasters in the future. 

Activities include: Training and capacity-building on disaster mitigation, preparedness and response, conducting training and drilling repeatedly, and networking with government and non-government institutions, village level bodies, and individuals.

Disaster Preparedness

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