By Rachel Deery | Grant Writer
Ramp up work on Resilient Homes (fondly referred to locally as Hamro Ramro Ghar, or "Home Sweet Home") got started just after Christmas in the remote community of Basbari, which is in the Sindhupalchok District of Nepal. This is a mountainside community of six small villages. Most villagers are farmers, tailors or laborers and are very poor. Three of the villages are marginalized, in that their population is considered lower caste, and so they often receive less services than neighboring villages. Homes in this area were especially vulnerable to the earthquakes as they were constructed of stone and timber held together by mud masonry. Since the earthquakes, most of the families have been living in makeshift shelters.
During the first week of the project, All Hands staff and volunteers constructed the remote campsite where they will be living during construction of the homes. All Hands' base is a 40 minute drive down steep, poorly maintained roads, and during a crippling fuel crisis, it is not feasible to have the 20+volunteers and staff to commute daily. The team also began preparing profiles on the beneficiary families, to aid in the overall documentation and measurement of the project's success.
So far, work has begun on six homes. The first two have foundations, superstructure, roof and walls.
As work began on the foundations, the first challenge (other than the fuel crisis which is impacting recovery efforts nationwide) became apparent: the soil is much rockier than in Kathmandu, where the pilot project had taken place. Because there are no construction machines on these remote cliff faces, teams work with hand held tools, so the timeline projections had to be adjusted to allow for a day and a half for foundation digging, rather than a day only. This may not be an issue for all of the homes in the community.
Otherwise, the mood is positive, and the training in disaster-resilient construction will be beginning later this month, once the beneficiary profiles are compiled. The All Hands teams and resiliency trainers are involved in community building activities to pave the way for effective community involvement which will transfer skills in building back better.
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