Israel was among the first countries to send humanitarian aid to Nepal after earthquakes measuring 7.8 and 7.3 on the Richter scale devastated the mountainous country in April 2015, killing nearly 9,000 and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes.
A year later, Israeli nonprofits Tevel b’Tzedek (The Earth in Justice) and IsraAID are still on the scene, helping Nepali villagers get back on their feet, and expect to be there for some time to come.
Tevel b’Tzedek, founded by Rabbi Micha Odenheimer with the goal of engaging young Jews and Israelis in the developing world, began its humanitarian work in Nepal in 2007. The original plan was to cycle volunteers to one impoverished district at a time.
“When the earthquake hit, we were in the second cycle,” Deputy Director Elana Kaminka told ISRAEL21c. “But the quake hit the communities from the first cycle and we knew these people, so we redeployed to those communities in addition to continuing with the ones in the second cycle, which also was hit by the earthquake. In addition, we took on a third district that was affected.”
The organization’s connections and understanding of the region were of invaluable help to other NGOs arriving on the scene.
“The [Jewish Joint Distribution Committee], which is one of our donors, showed up the day after the earthquake,” said Kaminka. “We’re not a disaster-relief organization and they have more expertise in that but had no knowledge of Nepal and no staff here, so we joined forces and have been working closely together.”
One of their joint projects is a youth service program modeled after Israeli year of national service. “We train and provide a small stipend to 40 youth leaders to take a role in rebuilding their own communities,” said Kaminka. “People always think about Israeli technology and agriculture, and we do introduce technologies such as drip irrigation, but Israeli social models are also interesting.”
Tevel b’Tzedek helped an Israeli medical team from Natan International Humanitarian Aid with logistics immediately after the earthquake, and recently finished a project with Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency-response network, to distribute building supplies and food to 800 Nepali families.
Bishnu Chapagain, the Nepali director of Tevel b’Tzedek’s activities in Nepal, earned his doctorate in plant science in Israel at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His agricultural training is critical to the organization’s long-term project to introduce Nepali farmers to Israeli farming practices.
Programs in agriculture, education, disaster-risk reduction, crisis intervention, and income generation are benefiting some 25,000 villagers in six of Nepal’s most impoverished regions. The projects are run by 80 Nepali and 59 Israeli staff and volunteers working side by side, fulfilling a three-year commitment to the government of Nepal.
“We don’t come and tell them what to do,” stressed Kaminka. “They tell us what they need help with and we approach our work as a partnership with them. Our focus is not only giving out things but developing people in the community who can take on these projects long after we’re gone.”
Tevel B’Tzedek produced a video last year documenting the programs it was involved in to help survivors of the quakes to recover.
IsraAID arrived in Nepal two days after the earthquake to help rescue survivors and establish a temporary field clinic in northeast Nepal.
The organization now runs a variety of humanitarian projects in Nepal under the direction of 55 Nepali and five Israeli staffers, said IsraAID Global Partnership Director Yotam Polizer, who visits every other month and directs all the NGO’s activities in Asia. “We’ll be there at least three more years because these are all long-term initiatives,” he told ISRAEL21c. Polizer was quite familiar with the country before the earthquake through his previous positions at Tevel b’Tzedek and at the Israeli embassy in Kathmandu.
Working in all six affected districts with support from the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federation network, IsraAID brings in Israeli specialists to train local NGOs to run initiatives such as an emotional support hotline. Ahead of this past winter, IsraAID and a Korean NGO distributed more than 1,000 packages of warm clothing to Nepali children affected by the earthquake. Polizer points out that the goal was not only to protect the children from the cold but also to ensure their ability to attend school during the winter.
One of IsraAID’s current projects, dubbed HoneyAID, is a beekeeping cooperative staffed by women who lost their homes and sources of income in the earthquake. “We helped establish a factory that now employs 130 women and is expanding to employ 500 in the next year or so. They sell honey to local stores and to tourists in Nepal. Each woman receives one beehive stacked with a colony of local Himalayan bees to start her venture,” Polizer said.
IsraAID trained six theater troupes to present plays in all the earthquake-affected districts as an effective way of relaying information about building community resilience, helping children cope with trauma, and dangers to women stemming from violence and trafficking. “Theater is an important part of the Nepali culture, and they don’t have electricity or Internet so it’s the best way to deliver messages,” explained Polizer. “Altogether, more than 70,000 people have taken part in our theater program, and the model is now being adopted by UNICEF.”
IsraAID also continues to work actively in Japan five years after the tsunami (the only foreign organization still on the ground after arriving in March 2011), so several partnerships have developed between its teams in Fukushima and Nepal.
The Japanese government is funding a program where Israeli and Japanese experts who have worked with IsraAID in Fukushima are sent to a Nepali university to train a cadre of disaster-relief professionals such as social workers.
Polizer is especially excited about an exchange program involving five high school students from Nepal and five from Fukushima.
“The Nepali teens came to Japan and they learned from one another and created bonds,” said Polizer. “This was significant because it’s rare for victims of different disasters to make contact with one another. We hope to do more of this. We are fundraising for it now because it was really successful.”
(via Israel21c)
[Photo: Tevel | תבל בצדק / Facebook ]