Nepal suffered incredible losses after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake ravaged the country on April 25, 2015 and a 7.3 aftershock struck on May 12, 2015. Over 8,000 people lost their lives, nearly 600,000 homes were destroyed and another 280,000 damaged. This disaster has left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Nepal Center of North Carolina (NCNC) organized ONE OF A KIND 5K Run/Walk event “Run4Nepal” in Morrisville, NC on August 30, 2015. This event was organized to raise funds to support reconstruction of elementary schools in highly devastated earthquake regions in Nepal. More details can be found in Run4Nepal.org
Run4Nepal’s Coordinator: Mr. Dipendra Nath Lamichhane
Core volunteers: Archana Pande Lamichhane, Pragya Luitel, Sunil Dhungel, Aman Tandukar, Nischal Pradhan, Siju Gurung, Manira Rayamajhi
Run Day Brief
Run4Nepal, 5k Run/Walk, was hugely successful and covered by multiple media outlets. Approximately 500 individuals of Asian and non-Asian origins participated in the race. 130 participants were the competitive runners. The well planned and flawless execution turned this event as one of the most successful events in the triangle area. NCNC highly appreciate for all the hard work put forth by the dedicated Run4Nepal’s volunteers led by Mr. Dipendra Lamichhane.
Fund raised and disbursed
We raised approximately $27K from the Run event. After deducting the expenses we raised about $21K to support school reconstruction project in Nepal.
After careful exploration and consideration of various organizations working post-quake on the ground in Nepal, we decided to go with Educate the Children (ETC) International who agreed to use 100% the fund raised through Run4Nepal in the school rebuilding project at no administrative cost. ETC is an International Non-governmental Organization headquartered in Ithica, NY, USA. ETC’s Nepal branch has been working in the country with children and women of the marginalized communities. Main goal of the ETC Nepal is to build self-reliance among marginalized communities by ensuring quality education of children and adults through integrated community development activities that create awareness and sustainable improvements towards the quality of life.
As a first step, Mr. Lamichhane on behalf of NCNC obtained a general proposal outline from the ETC for the school project (Proposal in pdf format). In the next step, ETC performed a field evaluation to identify the schools in an extreme need for the reconstruction support. ETC finally identified and proposed 4 elementary schools in the greatest need of support:
- Guranse Primary School in Lapilang VDC,
- Deurali Primary School in Lapilang VDC,
- Janakalyan Primary School in Lamidanda VDC, and
- Saptamai Primary School in Babare VDC.
ETC also submitted various pictures taken during the field visit to provide familiarity with current situation on the ground for these 4 schools (Photo sheet for NCNC Dec 2015).
After careful consideration of the schools’ situation, and the primary schools in the lowest priority for the Nepal government, NCNC decided to support the fund raised through Run4Nepal for 4 elementary school constructions. NCNC disbursed $15,656.00 in November, 2015 based on the estimate provided by ETC (NCNC TY letter). The remaining fund of around $5K will distributed among these 4 schools to support purchase of learning materials. The plan is being discussed with ETC.
Project Status: COMPLETED
ETC has completed the construction of the 4 school identified above using the fund raised from Run4 Nepal by NCNC. The final report submitted by ETC discusses about the four school projects supported by NCNC and provides pictures for the newly constructed schools. Details about the completed project can be found here (Project Details). The completed school pictures are as shown below:
Below is an email from Dr. Lisa Lyons, Director of ETC International after completion of the school project supported by NCNC using the funds raised from Run4Nepal:
“Thank you Archana and Dipu for the support. We are very glad to be able to give these kids a much nicer and safer place to learn.
It is also worth noting that I have recently been able to use the information gathered for the NCNC proposal and reports to interest another group of people – a church congregation in Vermont, one member of which is a boy born in Nepal, abandoned at an orphanage, and later adopted into a Vermont home – in the possibility of doing a similar project. They approached us wondering what we are doing in the way of rebuilding work, and I had all this information ready to share about the costs and resulting buildings, photos, etc. It really impressed them that we could answer so quickly and thoroughly, so we’ll see if they are able and willing to do something similar. In that case, we could say that NCNC’s support has provided what we in non-profit development refer to as “leverage” to help win additional funding and, of course, to help more kids.
We would be very grateful for any additional support you may at some point be able and willing to provide. Supplies and classroom materials are an ongoing need, as they do get used up, and of course what they already had was destroyed last year. If you are especially interested in early education, I can also describe to you our special activities to support the teachers and classes at that level.”
