Volunteers to Nepal - Volunteer Centre moves ahead

Hi guys

Things are progressing positively on our volunteer centre. We bought the land for this back in December 2008, but work has been delayed due to the difficulty in agreeing the design and spec of the building. We went out to tender a few months ago to the big construction firms in Kathmandu, but the quotes we got back in were up to €550,000 in cost, which is completely beyond our financial resources! We had discussions with local builders in Humla, who could build a building for around €20,000, but the building would not withstand an earthquake. While I have always been of the view that the building needed to be earthquake-safe, the recent events in Haiti further enforce this view. I don't think there is one building in Humla that would withstand an earthquake, so apart from our volunteers being safe, it means our building could be used as a temporary hospital and shelter, which would be life-saving if there was an earthquake.

So finally, some progress. We have tracked down an engineer in Nepal who has experience building in Humla. The project is complex, because (i) we are building in the highest risk earthquake zone in the world, with a major earthquake being overdue, so the building must be able to withstand a major earthquake, (ii) in Humla, the only locally available materials are stone, timber and mud. If you want to bring in steel, concrete etc, you need to charter a helicopter as there are no roads, which makes it prohibitively expensive, and (iii) our budget for the build is only €30,000. This means that we need to use local materials and building techniques, which are very primitive, but nevertheless build something which is earthquake-proof.

We got designs and costings in yesterday which come to around €30,000 for a small two storey, four roomed building of about 2,500 sq ft, with a separate shower and toilet block. We are finalising the designs now and reviewing the costings. I have a team of civil engineering students from NUIG who are doing their second year project on this, so they are going through the detailed costings and bill of materials, and comparing this to some of the tenders we previously received, and also checking that the designs, which use a stone and mud mortar construction, are compliant with the Nepali building code on earthquakes. Our volunteer architect in Ireland is also working on the designs, and I would hope in the next two weeks, we will have signed off on the final layout and costings. I am hoping to start building by April.

We have a number of volunteers now coming out to help on the build from April, who are busy fundraising! They will be coming out for 2-4 weeks, and are raising about €3,500 each, of which €1,000 will go towards the build costs, while the rest will cover their travel and accommodation. Once our volunteer centre is built, we can take up volunteers to help out teaching English and getting involved in permaculture and other activities, so I am really excited that we are finally making progress!

The final challenge is to get the rest of the budget raised for the building. We are in very challenging times at the moment, with our fundraising in November and December hit by the floods in Galway, while January has seen funds that were promised to us being diverted to Haiti. While my heart goes out to the people affected by these things, we still have to continue to run our programmes and we can't close our healthposts and other programmes because there is an earthquake on the other side of the world! Haiti is getting enormous financial support, and many people there have family in the US who can send money back to them, and the US government has committed $100m, while I heard that Denis O'Brien alone has committed €35m, and the Irish goverment has sent out a few million, so I have no idea how much has been raised so far for Haiti - it must be several hundred million dollars.

It shows the power of the media, so we really need to get our media and PR effort ramped up, to galvanise public support for our work. I will give you an update on this next week - plans are afoot and we are pulling together a very strong team of PR professionals who have offered their services on a voluntary basis!

I take the view as well that if you decide you are doing something, like building the volunteer centre, the funding will follow. You need to set a vision, and then the various elements will fall into place. The universe will provide, as they say! So we need to get funds together for the building costs. We have some of this, but there is still some way to go.

If anyone would like to volunteer their services to us in Ireland, or come out to Nepal to work on the build, do get in touch - we would love to hear from you! And if anyone would like to help fundraise for us, that would be an enormous help. Take care and have a good week! Lots of love, Nicky XXX