Massive flooding at Children’s Home and school in Nepal

In the midst of Nepal’s COVID cri­sis, our crew at MM was sad­dened to learn that fur­ther dev­as­ta­tion arrived in a vil­lage about a three hour dri­ve out­side of Kath­man­du where we have a long his­to­ry. In June, the mon­soon began with vio­lent floods in the area of the Children’s Home which we have sup­port­ed since 2009 through Chang­ing Lives Nepal (CLN). MM Guide Deana Zabal­do is the co-founder of CLN, and we have part­nered with them for many years to give back in Nepal. 

As many of our guests that have joined us on the Ever­est Base Camp trek have con­tributed to the Children’s Home and the school we want­ed to update you all. With our last fundrais­er we raised mon­ey for our guid­ing staff but also has mon­ey ear­marked for Covid assis­tance. Moun­tain Mad­ness has con­tributed $2,000 towards fix­ing the school, of which $500 was from gen­er­ous dona­tions from sup­port­ers. It’s been a dif­fi­cult year in Nepal, all on the heels of 2020 and the Covid cri­sis. A pow­er­ful mon­soon made mat­ters worse.

Mas­sive flood­ing to this degree of the Melam­chi Riv­er, which is next to the Children’s Home and their school, has not been seen in 100 years or more! Thank­ful­ly the chil­dren and their home are safe, but their school was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged. The surg­ing riv­er swept away land at the river­banks, destroy­ing homes, farms, and schools for miles. The Terse Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary School lost 9 class­rooms to the flood. The school has seen increased enroll­ment due to the COVID cri­sis as chil­dren left schools in the cap­i­tal of Kath­man­du when fam­i­lies lost their incomes. Terse is now also expect­ing a lot of new stu­dents as over­flow from the near­by schools that were destroyed by the flood. 

Replac­ing lost class­rooms is essen­tial but very expen­sive, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when this rur­al com­mu­ni­ty has just put their resources towards cop­ing with the COVID surge in May. Chang­ing Lives Nepal has fund­ed first med­ical and oxy­gen sup­plies for the COVID surge and then a tem­po­rary retain­ing wall to pre­vent fur­ther ero­sion at the school. CLN has also start­ed to rebuild class­rooms before the next school year begins in August. Moun­tain Mad­ness is pro­vid­ing essen­tial fund­ing to help fin­ish build­ing these class­rooms and replace desks, bench­es, and chalk­boards. We thank you for your help to Make It Happen! 

If you would like to con­tribute to the Children’s Home and school, please go direct­ly to Chang­ing Lives Nepal to make a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion and men­tion funds to go to flood­ing projects. Many thanks!