Our love and prayers go to the people of Nepal. Up to this moment, we in Europe are still busy contacting our colleagues, friends and families in Nepal, many of whom still have not marked themselves as “safe.” Strategic Edge International has been working in Nepal since 2013 on disaster preparedness, training and organizing NGOs, INGOs, and grassroots communities to develop empowered individuals who can take care of themselves, their loved ones, and their neighbours in the event of an earthquake. I was just in Kathmandu last week teaching Light Search & Rescue to Swisscontact, a local organization that manages youth employment programs. I returned home to Switzerland just 2 days before the earthquake struck. How I wish I hadn’t left, for then I would be on-site helping people and looking for my loved ones in the disaster-struck areas. It was an astounding coincidence, certainly unintentional, that we were able to complete the training just before the big rumble. We thank the Almighty for that.
Our deep regret is that we weren’t able to train more people, that our plan of going directly to the communities, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, to train and organise them, did not materialise quickly enough. The lack of funding and resources was not the obstacle. We simply ran out time.
In the news and on the internet, everyone is asking why Nepal was caught unprepared by an earthquake that they knew was coming. My question is, why didn’t the world help Nepal, when the world also knew that the big earthquake could strike anytime.
Today I saw an article talking about the experts who went to Nepal the week before the earthquake to plan and assess. But it seems that they did more questioning and complaining about the lack of preparedness than on implementing any useful recommendations. It struck many of us as arrogant and condescending, when experts talk like this, especially post-disaster, almost as though they blame the Nepalese for the tragedy. This is condescending; sheer arrogance that is made even more disturbing after the predictions came true.
On CNN, all over the news and on the internet, it is blatantly implied, and in fact many ask pointedly, why Nepal was caught unprepared by an earthquake that they knew was coming. Perhaps the better question is, why didn’t the world help Nepal in their preparations, when the world also knew that the big earthquake would strike anytime?
It is not true that the Nepalese did not prepare. They tried valiantly, but no one really helped. Citizens’ preparation efforts over the past 2 years did not get much support, and certainly not enough attention. In the communities, and through organisations like Women Empowerment Nepal (WEN), the local people were aware, and they were worried, and they did what they could. But we all know how hard it is to undertake such efforts, let alone sustain them, when poor communities have no materials, no equipment, no instructors. No donor was willing to fund preparedness programs, and many poor communities have no access to donors or NGOs in the first place. For the past two years we’ve been fighting to call attention to the issue of supporting local efforts. Grassroots organisations like WEN tried to empower themselves despite the lack of resources. Community leaders went on local radio broadcasting instructions on assembling go-bags, organising rescue teams, identifying secure shelter. The people knew what they needed beforehand – tents, WASH kits, gloves and hardhats, first aid kits, and so on. But they have no access to these. Their funding applications met with refusals, and still they plodded on. Many of the efforts were led by women, who themselves had to struggle under the weight of gender-based challenges in a society like Nepal. Six months ago, I discussed a proposal with Deputy Prime Minister Prakash Man Singh, and he was very interested, but he needed time to look for funding. And then time ran out.
Today the international community is rushing to send aid to this devastated mountain country. We trust that aid agencies will consider the above-mentioned points in their response programs. The Nepalese are strong and resilient, and they know what they want, what they need. As of this writing, colleagues and friends update me on the fact that, as they go from shelter to shelter, they have not seen any aid representative, only Nepalese rescue teams. But they are not waiting for aid. The survivors pulled themselves together and started distributing noodles and WASH kits, just as they dug through the rubble with bare hands to rescue people. They are appealing now for financial support and resources so that they can continue to do so.
Nepal is having difficulty coping with the massive influx of people arriving to help. Many of the volunteers have no idea how. Many experts do not speak the language or have never even been there. Aid agencies are busy meeting and coordinating, gearing up for needs assessments. We can only hope that all these will not burden an already traumatised people. Questions about needs, for instance, will only generate community fatigue. The Nepalese say, at least from the messages they are sending, is that they need support to be channeled direct to the communities, meaning, the local organisations that have no access to international donors, the neighbourhoods who are coping with survival, people who are not reached by government and agencies. We must trust the Nepalese, not only in their incredible resilience and courage, but in their capacity to undertake their own recovery. They have enough people in Nepal; what they lack are resources and funds. We can only hope and urge aid agencies to partner directly with the grassroots, and to really listen to them and enable them to make the decisions.
We continue to urge that community-based disaster preparedness efforts be given the support it did not enjoy before. It is a major path towards resilience and community sustainability, especially as we know that more disasters are sure to strike this high-risk country in the years and decades to come.
Now is not the time for regret over how things could have been done better. Today we focus instead on helping the people who continue to dig through rubble, who huddle in uncertain places, needing food, medicine, shelter, and supplies, and yet helping each other even as they struggle to keep themselves alive.
Today we are launching the Women’s Earthquake Recovery Initiative for Nepal. We focus on the communities, on the ordinary individuals – the clothing designer, the shoe seller, the artist, the fruit vendor – who lost everything, who most likely cannot access aid agencies. It’s hard enough to make a living in a poor country, most especially for the women, whose businesses are now destroyed. Gone are their homes, their projects, their means of livelihood. It is said that women are most vulnerable during disasters, as the burdens they carry and the inequality they suffer in society are magnified by the uncertainty of a devastating event. This need not be the case in Nepal, if we get active today. In fact, the women can lead this recovery initiative. They will be the priority, as well as any household that has lost a female member and where male partners and children are now coping on their own.
Donations will go directly to organisations in the two hardest hit cities, Kathmandu through Women Empowerment Nepal, and Pokhara through Three Sisters Adventure Group. It will provide emergency care, psycho-social counselling, and the reconstruction of their businesses and means of livelihood. By helping them rebuild, we help rebuild their entire society.
On the last week of May, when the mad rush to this grief-stricken country has subsided, when the Nepalese have had the chance to take stock, I will travel back to Kathmandu with the supplies that our organizations there are requesting, for by that time their current supply would have run out. It is a modest effort, in no way comparable to what big agencies can provide, but it is a grassroots effort, from you and me to the Nepalese. I am just the conduit. And all together we can do this.
Edessa Ramos is founder & executive director of Strategic Edge International, a social enterprise duly registered in Switzerland and Nepal, committed to providing safety and security services to humanitarian workers and affected communities. Edessa is also advisor to Women Empowerment Nepal, which she helped establish in Kathmandu in March 2013. WEN is a duly registered non-profit organization in Nepal that provides women and children with self-defense training, legal literacy, psychosocial counselling, and livelihood support. (Photo R courtesy of Khallika FB Photos).
