SI President Yvonne Simpson has announced that during her two years of office, her President’s Appeal will focus on working with partners in order to provide education and leadership opportunities for women and girls in Nepal.
SI Poole has a Friendship Link with SI Kathmandu and we have already sent significant sums of money directly to their Club’s bank account in Kathmandu. These funds, and those donated by other SI Clubs worldwide are being used by SI Kathmandu to deliver practical support to those most in need.
Recently, to mark December 10th, International President’s Appeal day, SI Poole has donated over £400 to this cause.
Our Friendship Link with SI Kathmandu is thriving. At the Glasgow Conference, Sue Fortescue met Rachana Upadhyaya, a member of SI Kathmandu, who is currently studying at the University of Hull. Rachana gave a powerful presentation, focussing on the challenges facing Nepal and on the very practical work being done by the Soroptimists. Sue met Rachana again when she gave a presentation to SI Leeds, giving an update on the work being done and the challenges posed by India’s blockade of the border with Nepal, one of the few ways that goods can enter the country.
Friendship Links are an important part of Soroptimism. Through them we can get some idea of the lives led by our Soroptimist sisters throughout the world.
A post on the SI Kathmandu Facebook page shortly after the first earthquake on April 25th describes the aid they delivered to a group of schoolgirls they support:
“Our visit to Panchkhal was made on May 5, 2015. The objective was to do rapid visual earthquake impact assessment of the houses. Our civil engineer’s team including Er. Dipa Khakurel (General Secretary, SI Kathmandu) ,Er. Sampurna Acharya, Er. Sudip Subedi and Er. Pradeep Dulal ( whom our club is heartily thankful for their volunteering their valuable time, knowledge and facilitating transportation) made the visit with our President Radha Nepal. We reached every single house of our supported girls and also facilitated many other houses of villagers. All of the houses of 11 girls are collapsed to ground by now. They are living in tents. Since they have complicated family background we cannot make them individual buildings. We found many more children who lost their both parents due to earthquake during our visit to various schools in different districts. We plan to build a learning center including the shelter home for all those children including our supported girls. Currently we are busy in addressing the immediate needs like for now we are focused in Building temporary school shelters for schools who have their building collapsed to grounds. We already have sent the required materials to one school in Sindhupalchok , three school in Kavre district, four schools in Dolakha district far from Singati ( one of the completely destroyed village in Dolakha). We will be inaugurating it soon respectively taking two days and one night staying in Dolakha district. 10 more schools are identified, 5 in Ramechaap district and 5 in Gorkha district. This time,we plan to do the proper design such that the materials donated for construction may be used completely for permanent school building for Ramechaap and Gorkha district. Another visit was made by General Secretary Er. Dipa Khakurel ( civil engineer/ hydropower engineer) and Er. Rupendra Bar Dhoj Thapa ( structural engineer) to two schools Shree Jorpati Secondary School and Shree Ajad Higher Secondary School on 11 June, 2015. We thoroughly examined all buildings of two schools. But the team including the geotechnical engineer and the structural engineer will make field visit again for the detailed seismic vulnerability analysis for future along with the cost estimation of the repair and reconstruction for damage. We will update the report as soon as they submit it to our club. We plan to repair and rebuild these two schools.”
The work being done by SI Kathmandu is a fine example of Programme Action. I hope that all Soroptimist Clubs in our Region, as well as others throughout the world, will do their utmost to support this gallant Club in their time of need.
Sue Fortescue
SI Poole