Earthquake and disaster risk reduction in Nepal

3 New Gender Friendly School Toilets in Gorkha

PHASE Nepal has sucessfully completed the rebuilding of school toilets of two secondary schools and one basic (lower secondary ) school which were damaged after the earthquake. These schools lie in Kashigaun and Keruanja Villages, two of the remote and highly affected villages during the 2015 earthquake owing to their proximity to the epicentre in Gorkha.

These gender friendly toilets have two seperate blocks for boys and girls. The buildings were made based on the stadard design approved by Nepal Government. In addition to building the toilets, all the necessary arrangement for sanitation such as water tanks, taps, sanitary tables, soaps and tables, sanitary pads for girls, rubbish bin have also been arranged in each school to ensure proper hyegine.

The schools, Keraunja Secondary School, Manjushree Secondary School and Icchya Basic School have appreciated PHASE's continuous efforts to support earthquake hit school in their communities. Last year PHASE has supported these schools with most essential school materials such as white board, marker pens, sports material, stationery and science lab materials.

The school child clubs of each schools have been given responsibility of managing regular cleanliness of these toilets.

" I am hopeful that the provision of clean and gender friendly toilets will make children feel safe and comfortable in the school. I am also hopeful that the girls student will be more regular in the school even during the menstruation."

- Principal, Manjushree Secondary School, Kashigaun Gorkha

PHASE has also been supporting this 

PHASE Nepal has recently completed one of its major project called "Resilient Rehabilitation of trail project" in three earthquake affected villages in Gorkha namely Kashigau, Kerauja and Manbu. These villages are located significantly closed to the epicentre  of the Spring Earthquake 2015 and thus have suffured huge damage of live and properties during the earthquake. After the earthquake , the landslides induced by aftershocks and the following monsoon rainfall completely damaged the walking trails , the only transportation route to these villages causing mules tranportation to halt and day to day commuting extremely difficult and risky.

These reconstruction of these trails have been completed by the PHASE team its two year project  with the construction of  70 km long walking trails,5 pedestrian truss bridges, 8 pedestrian rest areas and installation of 606 meter long rope handholds and handrails to improve user safety levels.

It is very praiseworthy of PHASE team to have completed this challenging project in time. I understand how difficult it is to rebuild trails in these steep rocky terrains, says the Santa Bahadur Gurung,  elected chairperson of the Dharche Rural Municipality (Kashigaun and Keruanja area)

All the construction tasks were done on the basis of output based payment modality utilising local workers generating employment opportunities. Apart from restoring acess to these remote himalayan villages, the project also worked to advocate social equality for example providing the equal payment to both men and women for similar kinds of work.

I worked on this trail project for 50 days and earned 47,000 ruppes (about 360 pounds). I used that money for my children’s education in Lamjung," says Chin Maya Gurung. "We are happy because we received the same wage as men. We were never paid equally before," she adds.