Post Disaster Activities
As you know, Nepal has faced the worst time in its history last month. NECO Home Kathmandu was also seriously affected by the destructive earthquake. We lost our shelter, happy environment and our smiles as well. Likewise, our kids and stafs lost their home and relatives in their respective villages too. After the disaster, we had to sleep, cook and have meal inside a small shed. It was very critical condition but we HAD to convince ourselves and the small kids by looking at our neighbors who were facing the worst condition than us. It’s been almost two months that the major earthquake occurred. In this period, we received prayers and supports from our well-wishers from all over the world that gave us strength to fight with the difficult situation and helped for the betterment Of NECO Home.
New Residential Hostel Being Built
Meanwhile we are rebuilding our compound and constructing a new residential hostel for all of the children, which will be comprised of 4 rooms. We lost a rented house so even if we repaired the damaged house, our present house does not have enough room for all the children. Meanwhile most all continue to live in a cow barn we were constructing. We now jokingly refer to it as the Animal House, after the movie.
Present stage of construction.
Engineers required that we construct the above retaining wall which has added over $2,000 to our costs.
With the initial help of our dear contributors, we have taken the vacant land on lease which is next to NECO compound and have started to build the new hostel. Construction is ongoing. The basic structure is ready and now we need to do the partition framing. And the workers as well as neighbors are really supporting us to complete it as soon as possible.
The building is 70/28 Ft wide and it has 10 Ft height with 15 foot pitched roof. The materials and the design we are using will make the structure earthquake free. There will be enough space for the boys and girls and the house will look beautiful after it will be completed and landscaped.
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
Stage 4:
We also need to build new shower and toilet facilities. One of our initial floor designs is this:
This project is most critical. We know many of you have already helped financially. But more help is desperately needed, otherwise construction will need to be stopped.
Ash Bahadur, our new Neco Home Captain who was voted in office by all the children, and Surakshya.
We are updating our photo gallery soon with all new pictures of our children.
RECAP
As the time passes, we need to get out of the misery and move ahead. After the disaster, NECO has lots of construction and maintenance works. At the first phase, our kids and staff united to remove the trash and clean the surroundings.
Our girl’s hostel was damaged and we lost the boys hostel since the owners needed their house returned. We’re still managing to stay in the small shed. But the kitchen and dining areas are partly damaged although we are working around the problems.
Kids’ Activities in the “Animal House”
Girls Hostel
This is the picture of girl’s room; the dangerous part of the wall has been torn down, but some walls need replacement.
Before:
Now:
Unity Building: Major reconstruction, Highest Costs
We have to tear out the broken walls of unity building and repaired it by using Iron beams. The partition wall of the office floor has been broken down. To reduce the weight, we are soon removing the concrete wall made on the top of building.
Before and after pictures of unity building:
Steel I-Beams have been set to give additional support:
The concrete stairs have been replaced with steel, which is stronger and lighter weight. Engineers say we must reduce the weight over the ground floor as much as possible.
Before:
After:
Cracked walls of the main building has been repaired using lighter weight aluminum windows and frames.
Prayers
After the unity building got severely damaged (where the unity room and office exists) got damaged, our kids are doing prayers and reading books in open area of the dining hall. Despite infrastructure difficulties, we didn’t stop doing prayers twice a day. Our prayers were for peace and healing for all mankind as well as for the victims of the disaster. We also continually pray to help reduce stress and fear in our children, especially as smaller earthquakes continue.
Thanks to Aleena Nepal, our senior caregiver, for providing most of the photos and original text.