Lakasa Nepal provided resources and technical assistance to build temporary shelters while transferring the skills to the local masons in the affected areas. Our shelters were based on the designs created by Aashraya Nepal at Institute of Engineering, Nepal. These shelters were well suited for Nepal’s climate and could be completed in less than a day and lasted for more than a year. The simple, affordable and easily replicable design was adopted as a solution for the fast approaching monsoon by many organizations and volunteers. This technology allowed us to use minimal resources and the temporary metal shelter (TMS) was adequate for a family of 5 to 6 members.
The 349 shelters were distributed to different affected areas during May - August 2015.
SUCCESS STORIES
During the construction, we came across many families with their own problems, among which the following two stories touched our hearts. We are proud and satisfied that our shelters found their way to help these people. The earthquake on April 25th, took her husband's life and brought down her house. She was pregnant and awaiting delivery. On 30th May she gave birth to a son in a cowshed. They were forced to live homeless when we got to them. They were so pleased to get their home in the form of temporary shelter that tears of joy rolled down their face.Another place in Sindhupalchowk, a woman who is now the sole caretaker of a family of an 8 years old daughter, a 4 years old son and an ageing mother-in-law. Last year her husband and his father had a dispute, which lead to the loss of both of their lives. The dispute had flared to a level where the father committed suicide by drowning himself in a river and the son lost his life in the desperate attempt to save his father. One of our temporary shelter now houses the woman with her two children and her husband’s mother after their home was destroyed by the earthquake.
When the earthquake first hit, all I could think of was the safety of my family. But as the weeks passed, I could not help but wonder how all those people who lost their homes were doing. I went on a relief run organized by some friends. What I saw was utter destruction. With the monsoon fast approaching, it was a rush against time to provide as many temporary shelters to the people as possible.
We met with a local from Sindhupalchowk, who was in Kathmandu looking for tarpauline that were in short supply. We tried our best to find him some, but we could not. So we started working on how to provide shelters for his village. Me and my friends and family teamed up with Lakasa Nepal and adopted Aashraya Nepal’s design of temporary shelters for the purpose. We built our pilot project with much enthusiasm. We also collected some funds to send a few temporary shelters to Sindhupalchowk. But back then, we never thought we would be able to accomplish as many as we have. Thanks to donors like MERCY RELIEF, our efforts have reached far and beyond what we had expected.
Due to the urgency of the situation, we were not able to visit each and every one of the shelter at the time of distribution, but we will be monitoring the shelters we provided and collecting the names and status of every single benefactor in the coming days while continuing our temporary shelter project.
Lakasa Nepal #RebuildNepal would like to thank the team of MERCY RELIEF , SINGAPORE for their support and guidance to our cause. We would also like to thank the village based volunteers and benefactors who worked tirelessly to build the temporary shelters for the success of this project as well as the volunteers, advisors and executive members of Lakasa Nepal for their continued support.
temporary shelters built in 7 districts.
