Did the earth move for you last Saturday?
We’ve all seen pictures of the devastation in
Nepal and heard the awful news. 1000s
killed, 100,000s homeless. It’s one of the
poorest countries in the world, and it was
suffering enough before Saturday’s
cataclysmic events.
Nepal is a popular tourist destination. People from
many countries have been caught up in this
enormous tragedy, which brings it home. However,
for some of us it’s even closer.
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Two years ago I went to Nepal for the first time, in an organised party from the UK. We were all
captivated. We didn’t follow the tourist trail; instead we stayed in remote hill villages. Local people
opened their homes to us and shared what they had, which wasn’t much.
When I sent a text to my wife back in England saying it
was a life-changing experience she thought I’d decided to
become a Bhuddist monk!  But she began to
understand when two Nepalese teachers stayed with us
in our house in the Yorkshire Dales and visited the school
where she teaches – the pupils were captivated too, and
talked about it for months.
Nepal is a special place, full of special
people. We have much to learn from them.
I’m Chairman of Kids at School in Nepal (www.kasin.org.uk), an educational charity
supporting schools and communities around the remote hill village of Phulkharka,
in Dhading district, 50 miles NW of Kathmandu. It was near the epicentre of the
earthquake – the next district, Gorkha, where one of our Trustees comes from, was
the epicentre.
Before Saturday it took 8 hours up a dirt track road to get to Phulkharka from the nearest town on the
Kathmandu to Pokhara highway, which is not exactly the M1 motorway, as I can attest; more like the
scariest road journey I’ve ever made in my life!! The dirt track road to Phulkharka was destroyed on
Saturday.
On Tuesday we received an email from our Vice President, Jyoti Adhikari, who’d managed to get to
Phulkharka. He was born there but now runs a trekking company (www.ecotreknepal.com) and a
trekkers’ hotel (www.holyhimalaya.com) in Kathmandu. This week he and his wife have opened up
their garden in Kathmandu and local residents are staying there in tents.
As you’d expect, Jyoti says Phulkharka is a
scene of devastation.
500 homes
destroyed, at least 15 people killed, some
unaccounted for. A small mercy is that the
earthquake struck on Saturday, a holiday,
when children were not in school. Most
people were out in the fields, except the
elderly and the very young. A poignant
factor is that many menfolk work abroad,
often in the Gulf (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and
Qatar), doing menial work and sending money home. So there are relatively few men on the scene to
contribute to the rescue and relief effort.
Jyoti is leading the effort to relieve Phulkharka. A Facebook page has been set up to keep people
informed worldwide - http://on.fb.me/1OIs5HR.
Less than 3 weeks ago Jyoti was here with us in North Yorkshire, celebrating KASIN’s 10th Anniversary.
Little did we know what would unfold 2 weeks later……events make fools of us all!
We are a small charity but have started to grow in recent
months. At our Annual General Meeting on 11th April, with
Jyoti in animated form, we discussed whether we should get
involved in building new classrooms; now we’re
contemplating the challenge of rebuilding schools, and an
awful lot more besides.
We had already been planning to reach out to our personal
and professional networks to encourage people to have fun
doing fundraising events for us, and to look for volunteers to
go to Nepal. Only last week we emailed Jyoti to ask him to give us more detail on the kind of volunteers
they needed to help make the community more sustainable and give people reasons to stay and make
a living there instead of going to Kathmandu or abroad.
Please help us to help our dear friends in Nepal in their hour of need, especially the children - the
country’s future. How?
You can donate online at http://bit.ly/1IrczLq
You can share this appeal with friends and family, and on social media, and
encourage people to donate
You can run a fundraising event for KASIN
You can volunteer in Nepal
Contact our Secretary, Patrick (‘Pat’) Wherity, or me if you want to know more. Our contact details
are at the foot of this page.
The friends and Trustees of KASIN are an active and
sociable bunch – UK-based and elsewhere (so far
Australia, Brazil, Canada). You can join us, or we’ll be
happy to keep you posted on what we’re doing to help
the communities we serve in Nepal. We guarantee that
all the money donated or raised will be spent on
necessary projects. We have people on the ground in
Nepal and the Trustees visit annually to assess how
effectively the money we raise is being spent. All of our
Trustees and supporters in Nepal and elsewhere give
their time freely. We bypass corruption.
So make a decision today to help us and/or get involved in some way. This is a chance to make a real
difference and gain a great deal in return, in friendship, wider horizons and fantastic life experience.
As we say in KASIN, the children of Nepal will be grateful!
Best wishes,
Mark Ashton
Chairman
Kids at School in Nepal (KASIN)
www.kasin.org.uk
[email protected]
Mobile: +44 (0) 7815 881726
Pat Wherity, Secretary of KASIN – [email protected]
30th April 2015