Safe to Grow, Protecting Nepali Children after EQ

It is now over three years since the devastating  earthquake  in Nepal which destroyed over 800,000 homes and affected around 8 million people. As well as destroying homes, it destroyed land, livelihoods and people’s way of life. In one of the world's poorest countries, in which inequality and extreme poverty were already huge problems, the earthquake disproportionately affected those already suffering. Unable to wait for support, many of the poorest were forced to leave their villages and head for cities like Pokhara to survive. However, no longer being in the areas directly impacted by the earthquake, these children and families were overlooked by the majority of other disaster responses. 

After the earthquake, we focused our response on an area in which we have the most experience and resources - helping children and families living in extreme urban poverty in Pokhara. Over the last three years, we have helped almost 1,000 earthquake affected children and their families who were forced to migrate to the city, the majority settling in slum areas. We helped them setup homes, supported them to access local services, and made sure their children could enrol in local schools. We rescued and rehabilitated girls who were victims of trafficking. We removed children from abusive and exploitative working conditions and reintegrated children with their families and back into mainstream education. For older adolescents, we worked with local employers to improve working conditions and provided skills training, business training and access to apprenticeships to prevent their exploitation.

We have integrated support for earthquake victims into our core programme in Pokhara and now almost 1 in 3 of the working and at risk children that we support have been affected by the earthquake in some capacity.

Thank you for your kind and generous support.

The Kidasha Team