MicroAid Continues in Nepal

Our second project in Nepal, headed by MicroAid’s new in-country project manager, is going well.

I am in daily contact with Nabina as she coordinates the repair of a multi-story family home in heart of Bhaktapur, the historic Newar capital in the urban Kathmandu Valley, for the Syma family.

The father of our beneficiary family died last year and left his wife and their two kids to fend for themselves. MicroAid vetted the situation to find out that they have no extended family and no other recourse.

The back wall of their house crumbled (pictured above) during the Gorkha earthquake in 2015, and they have been living in the bottom two rooms of the house ever since. The structure was completely unsafe, but they had nowhere else to go.

MicroAid is replacing the entire back wall, windows, and doors, and shoring up the internal walls and floors, while re-enforcing the supporting beams and removing the dangerous wooden balconies. (new back wall, below)

I also had an independent engineer, a friend from Kathmandu, look at the project, and we determined that we should also eliminate the entire top floor to reduce the overall load and make the building safe for future quakes—and for future generations of the Syma family.

Nabina is doing an awesome job keeping the project on schedule and on budget. I couldn’t be happier with her performance as MicroAid’s newest program manager. Additionally, by hiring Nabina, we have given another person in Nepal much needed employment—she is the oldest child in her family and is responsible for taking care of her parents and sisters. Her job with MicroAid will help her entire family.

For my part, beside coordinating the Nepal project, I am continuing to prep for a project in Paraguay, where, over the last few years, torrential flooding has caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. We are assessing the best course of action to help re-build some homes for flood-survivor families—probably in the capital of Asuncion (pictured flooded, below).