Expanding The Work In Nepal

The Nepal Government has approved the earthbag house as one of the designs that villagers affected by earthquake can use. They have also agreed to give a 300,000 rupees grant (S$4,000) to the villagers whose houses were wrecked by the earthquake. We have shifted our strategy from building the rice bag house to teaching the villagers how to build the rice bag house since they can get the grant from the government.

As they say, give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach the man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. With the government grant available, we want to help the villagers to make use of it and rebuild their lives, without developing a dependency on foreign aid.

We produced a video in Nepali with a professional film company, coupled with a manual to teach villagers how to build the rice bag houses themselves. The current phase of our project is to distribute these material to the villagers affected by the earthquake. We have arranged with a Nepali radio station to make an announcement about the availability of rice bag building resources.

We are teaching a new construction technique that they can use, instead of the traditional method of using mud and large stones, which will collapse with the next earthquake.

We would like to thank those of you who have generously donated and enabled us to help so many villagers.