Nepal Earthquake Recovery: let’s not forget

Bill Schoonover
bills@isb.ac.th

Monday, April 25, marks the one-year anniversary for the deadly Nepal earthquake of 2015. During this event, over 8,000 people were killed, over 20,000 injured and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. As the epicentre was just outside the capital city of Kathmandu, the human impact and devastation was enormous.

When this event happened, the ISB community quickly responded. Our global community includes Nepali citizens and others who have visited their beautiful country and fallen in love with the people, the landscape, and the culture. In addition, ISB has a special relationship with a unique, primary school in Kathmandu – the Moonlight School – dedicated to finding and educating the most at-risk and vulnerable children of the city who otherwise have limited options for learning and improving their situation in life. For the past 8 years, ISB has collaborated with the Moonlight School during Global Citizens Week to bring a group of ISB students to help support the school in Kathmandu and build awareness around urban poverty and the hope that comes through providing at-risk children with adequate education.

With great relief, there were no deaths in the Moonlight School student population following the earthquake, although there were various injuries and 100% of the families lived in the street following the earthquake, some for up to two months. Also, the earthquake badly damaged the Moonlight School building, which was rendered unsafe and unusable. In large part due to the generous support of the ISB community following the earthquake, Moonlight was able to construct a new, after-shock-resilient school in an empty lot nearby and they are now able to serve their students once again holding regular classes at the regular schedule.

Moonlight School, however, still needs support to become fully functional. As part of the post-earthquake construction project, Moonlight was able to dig a well to provide a water source for the school. The water, however, is not safe for drinking because of its high bacteria and iron levels. Moonlight currently buys drinking water for the children, but this is only a temporary measure, as it is extremely costly for a school that runs on such a small budget, taking away critical resources from educational materials and other school costs. Essentially, it is not a sustainable solution for the long run and Moonlight must install a water filtration system in order to fix this problem. In addition, the play area around the school is a dirt yard and dust is constantly blowing into the children’s classrooms, posing a significant health hazard for the students. While the fix may seem relatively simple – paving blocks or installing bricks in the yard and creating garden spaces – these types of building materials are quite expensive following all the post-earthquake construction that has been on-going in the city. Moonlight School is asking for additional support to be able to complete these critical components of their post-earthquake construction project. Projected costs for the water filtration system plus dust mitigation are in the range of $15,000 to $20,000 USD.

Over the next month, ISB will be running a school-wide fund-raiser for the Moonlight School safe drinking water and dust mitigation project.

Please consider donating money either in boxes set up in the lunchroom,

or by giving a money directly to the ISB Cashier’s Office for the“Moonlight” account.

In addition, here is a list of upcoming events where you can share your support for Moonlight’s continued recovery:

Thank you for your continued support. If you have questions, please contact Bill Schoonover, ISB HS Science Teacher, who recently visited the school and can discuss more of the details of that visit and the school’s specific funding needs:  bills@isb.ac.th