Update from Niranjan on Relief Efforts in Nepal

Thank you so much for your warmth partnership with us. We really want the various communities to take the initiative to help themselves in building their shelters and take some responsibility. I have discussed this with my fellow pastors who are leading their churches in earthquake affected areas.

We have selected three majors areas to be worked on;

1) Shelter, basic food and health affairs :

There are two ways of doing this:

A) Community shelters to be built by our teams and rooms will be provided for families.

B) Individual family homes : They will build their own home themselves on their own land but we will provide certain construction materials as a one time help.

We have started working to build provisional shelters for the earthquake survivors with your funds. Pastor Indra (left in photo) is one of the leaders who is working in an earthquake affected area. Several of his believers have lost their houses and family farms in this earthquake.  Pastor Indra, who is one of the beneficiaries of our Resource Centre, is a faithful man. He is helping us as our local representative in his district.

Building community shelters is a good idea but there are some challenges in doing this especially in regard to land issues and the future utilization of these buildings. However there is still a need to build more of these.

Sindupalchowk is a district that was badly affected by the earthquake and where we lost 17 believers at one of our local churches. Mr Purna Pahari and some of the believers were able to survive but lost everything and became homeless. We are planning to arrange their resettlement somewhere in the Kathmandu valley in a safe place.

Pastor Dipak and some believers of Nuwakot District have moved to another town for temporary resettlement because they have lost everything including their homes, church building, food and clothes and they don’t feel their homeland is safe because the rainy season is very near. After the rainy season they will go back to their village and rebuild their houses and church. Building some shelters and providing food and health materials for them is also one of our priorities. 

Basic food and medicines are being sent to those in need although this is not our primary focus now. We will let people work and earn food themselves. However if they really need help from us, we are always ready for that.

Pastor Gidon, Pastor Indralal and some believers are in the same kind of situation in Makawanpur District. We will do something for them too.

2) Schooling :

As you know, many children have lost their family members in this devastating earthquake. We have been encouraging the believers or their relatives to take the initiative to care for these children. Instead of collecting these children at a place such as a children's home we encourage our families to provide shelter for them. We started a movement “a family protects a parentless child”. However we have felt that we need to support these children for their schooling.

We have talked with seven Principals of different schools. They are ready to cooperate with us and we have started working through schools. The coordinators for this work are our local pastors.

3) Work settlement :  

People have not only lost their family members and homes but have also lost their businesses/work places too. At the moment no one is willing to work because they want lifelong support but this is not going to happen so we want to encourage them to start some kind of work to generate income for their family. Pastor Indralal, Pastor Supeep and Shanker are some leaders who have understood our perception and want to do something. However we realize that we need to provide them with some funds to start their work in these circumstances.

We have started enabling the survivors to restart their businesses. We are providing them with some funds and ideas to start their business. This is not a short term plan but it is a long term project.

We will keep a record of where the funds are spent and send you some photos of the work. Unfortunately because of the large amount of media and international NGO'S, people are offensive sometimes while taking pictures so we don't feel it is good to take pictures when people are in very difficult circumstances. However now we are in the rebuilding process we don't have any problems to take pictures.  

Blessings
Niranjan

Bright Hope World has sent a further US$14,000 to Niranjan to assist with the rebuilding process.