Nepal Flood: Hot Meals, Safe Homes, Protected Children

PHASE ONE IS 6,079 DOLLARS FROM DONE.

Our kitchen in Uttar Gaya, Rasuwa is cooking for around 300 people a day and has not stopped since the water came. 23 at-risk children, many without a parent, are in our temporary safe house. Two learning centres are opening for children whose schools are gone.

Phase One is USD 50,135 and it pays for all of it. You have given 44,056. Six thousand and seventy-nine dollars finishes it.

$1 serves two hot meals. $8.50 gives one child a full day of safe care.

Then comes the roof. Dashain begins on 11 October and Tika falls on 21 October. In Uttar Gaya this year, hundreds of families have no home to go back to. Our next goal is ten of those families funded and building before Tika day: USD 27,870, at 2,787 a household.

Phase Two in full is USD 216,231. Sixty-five homes before winter closes this district, plus health care, livelihoods and the rest of the water and sanitation. The full plan is below.

On the morning of 26 August, a wall of water, ice and rock came down from the high Himalaya and tore through Rasuwa. Scientists say the flood wave covered its first 22 kilometres in under seven minutes. More than 1,000 people are confirmed dead. Thousands are still missing. Rasuwa was cut off for days.

Uttar Gaya Rural Municipality took some of the worst of it. Local officials estimate 750 people missing from this one municipality. About 3,500 displaced people are crowded into whatever shelter exists, among them elderly people, pregnant women, new mothers and patients who need oxygen. The flood swept through the municipality compound and carried away its vehicles. The office that would normally count the losses cannot yet count its own.

What the news has not reported

In Bogatitar, a village in Uttar Gaya, many children are now without a parent. Some are confirmed dead. Most are simply missing, which for a child is its own kind of cruelty. No funeral, no answer, only waiting.

These children are sleeping in crowded shelters or with neighbours who lost their own homes. No adult is responsible for them. Nobody notices when one of them goes quiet, stops eating, or wanders off. And nobody is standing between them and the strangers who always come after a disaster like this, offering work in the city or a place at a faraway school.

We have spent nearly twenty years learning where those offers lead. In Nepal, separated children are among the first targets for traffickers, and the window to protect them is measured in weeks.

The plan

We did not arrive with a plan already written. Our team sat with local leaders and community groups first, the people who know every household by name. We asked what they needed, in what order, and what would make things worse.

Phase One. USD 50,135. CLOSING NOW.

Hot meals, every day. USD 10,505. The community kitchen in Uttar Gaya stays open and has not stopped since the day our team arrived. Two hot meals a day, seven days a week. The power lines are down, so a generator runs the kitchen and the rest of the response. One dollar serves two hot meals.

The safe house keeps running. USD 10,345. 23 at-risk children, many who lost parents in the flood have beds, meals, health checks, school supplies, two caretakers, a counsellor, a cook and a guard at the door. Family tracing runs from day one with the municipality, because a safe house is a bridge, not a destination. For children who have no safe family to return to, we already run child welfare homes in Birgunj and Janakpurdham, and we plan to open a long-term Sano Ghar in Rasuwa with the local government, so that no child has to leave their own district and their own language in order to be safe.

Clean water and dignity. USD 6,675. A water point, four latrines separated for women and men, and bathing spaces, designed for children, elderly people and people with disabilities.

Two Children Learning Centres. USD 15,510. Around 9,800 children across Rasuwa, Nuwakot abd Dhading have had their schooling stopped, and schools in Uttargaya and neighbouring Gosaikunda have reported 233 students among the missing. The centers give children lessons, play and psychosocial support, and we hand them to the local government after six months. Recovery should end with a community standing on its own, and we build for that from the first day. Lessons, play and psychosocial support. The flood passed in minutes. For a child, the fear does not. We run the centres for six months and hand them to the local government. Recovery should end with a community standing on its own, and we build for that from the first day.

Community mobilisation, protection and safeguarding. USD 2,000. Household registration, child protection referrals, and a safeguarding focal point who is somebody's actual job rather than a line in a policy.

Field and people operations, logistics, monitoring, contingency. USD 5,100. Staff transport into settlements the roads no longer reach, the monitoring workbook, and money held back for the thing nobody planned for. Ten percent of the phase. We would rather show it to you than hide it inside the other lines.

Phase Two. USD 216,231. THE ROOF AND THE WINTER.

First: ten homes by Tika (1oth day of Dashain festival). USD 27,870. Ten households funded and building before 21 October, so that at least some of Uttar Gaya has a home to come back to before the festival is over.

Then all sixty-five. USD 181,133 in total. Two rooms, a kitchen, a common space. A door that closes and a floor that stays dry. USD 2, 787 per household and every household is on a register with an ID number.

The rest of the water and sanitation. USD 6, 675. A second water point and four more latrines and bathing spaces as families move back onto their own land.

Community health. USD 5,000. Outreach for pregnant women, new mothers, elderly people and people with disabilities, in settlements where the health post is gone.

A way to earn again. USD 10,000. Fifty of the hardest-hit farming household, USD 200 each. For one family that is goats or chicks. For another, seed and tools for the next planting. For another, enough stock to reopen the shop the water emptied. Each family decides, because they know their own trade better than we do.

Community mobilization, protection and safeguarding. USD 3,100. Continued through the shelter build, which is when protection risks are highest.

Field and people operations, logistics, monitoring, contingency. USD 10, 323.

The clock is the season. The monsoon is still falling and winter is not far behind. Every week of delay is another week a family spends in the open.

What your donation does

$1 is two hot meals
$8.50 is one child, one full day of safe care
$200 is a family earning again
$[228] gives one child a bed, bedding and a place at the table
$[450] covers one child's full first month in the safe house
$2,787 gives a family of five a home
$7,755 runs a Children Learning Centre for six months

About 94 cents of every dollar goes into food, child protection, shelter, water, children's recovery and health. The rest is what it takes to deliver in a district with broken roads: transport, coordination, safeguarding, monitoring and contingency. We publish the full costed budget with that line shown separately rather than hidden inside the others.

Why trust us

Sano Paila means a little step. We are a Nepali organisation, and for nearly twenty years we have taken those steps in the country's hardest places. Our child protection team has rescued 424 children from exploitation and returned 405 of them to their families. We run Sano Ghar under a Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy that governs every adult who comes near a child in our care. We were in Gorkha within days of the 2015 earthquake and we stayed for years. We have delivered relief to more than 120,000 families across 17 districts and served over 118,000 hot meals during COVID. Our members take no salary, and grant funding goes to programmes and local Nepali staff rather than headquarters overhead. In Uttar Gaya we work directly with the Rural Municipality, district authorities and the communities themselves.

We are raising USD 266,366 in two phases. Donations are tax-deductible for US donors through Myriad USA.

The water came in minutes. Recovery will take months. Help the families and children of Uttar Gaya take their next step.