Holistic Rehabilitation for Post-Earthquake Nepal

GG Report January-April 2016

Nearly one year has passed since Nepal was hit by the devastating earthquake of 7.9 Richter Scale in April of 2015. And IsraAID's support to Nepalese communities still continues with even wider geographical and demographic coverage. Starting with the emergency response programs like Search and Rescue and Emergency Medical Relief, IsraAID is now working on a more sustainable and long term projects in Nepal. IsraAID currently is working on areas like Livelihood and Women Empowerment projects, Educational Support Program and Capacity Building programs for local NGOs working on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) issues.

As a part of its Women Empowerment and Livelihood Programs, IsraAID has started  a project on Beekeeping called Honey Aid. The project has trained 136 women so far on beekeeping and plans to train 500 women from rural earthquake affected villages. The training will be focused on Beekeeping, Harvesting and Marketing. The project's main objective is to empower women by providing them with livelihood skills.

IsraAID is also the key agencies in Nepal working in the area of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS). IsraAID has ongoing MHPSS projects in 7 earthquake affected districts of Nepal. IsraAID is one of the key technical supporters of several NGOs working on MHPSS issues in Nepal. It has trained more than 2000 NGO staffs, community mobilizers, volunteers and social workers in Nepal. IsraAID is also the key coordinating agency for all the Hotline Service Providers in Nepal. IsraAID has recently provided training to more than 100 hotline staffs of five major hotline providers in Nepal. We also conducted, for the first time ever, an experience sharing and partnership platform for all the hotline providing NGOs of Nepal.

As a part of IsraAID's Educational Support Program, IsraAID is supporting 65 orphan youths, who have lost their parents in the earthquake. We provide these youths with educational scholarship to complete their studies, vocational/skill development trainings as per their interest and job placement training and support. Likewise, IsraAID's education program also includes a 10 month long training course called Nepal Disaster Specialist's Education Program (NDSEP) in coordination with Department of Psychology at Trichandra College in Kathmandu where we have trained 25 highly skilled individuals from different fields of development sector to become disaster specialists. This program aims to cater to the scarcity of disaster specialists in Nepal in case of potential future emergencies.

On top of our long term projects, we also respond to emergency situations in Nepal and run short term interventions as needed. With severe winter in Nepal last December-January, the international agencies and government agencies were not able to provide safe housing to people in the hills and mountains of the earthquake affected villages making them victim to harsh winter and cold of the mountains. Owing to this situation, IsraAID started its Beat the Winter, project where our team distributed more than 1100 winter kits in Sindhupalchowk district. Similarly, IsraAID's Community Theater response team went as far as North East India (among Nepalese communities of India) with Pyschosocial First Aid intervention program after the area was hit by 6.7 earthquake of January 2016. So far, IsraAID's community theater team have reached out to more than 30,000 individuals in the earthquake affected districts of Nepal with various Psychosocial Support Programs and interventions.

So, we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all our supporters, well wishers and contributors without whom all of these wonderful activities and programs to support the earthquake affected communities of Nepal would not have been possible.

Thank You.