Tearfund received funding in 2017, through the Scottish Government's Humanitarian Emergency Relief Fund, to respond to flooding in Nepal.
Following the devastating floods in Nepal in August 2017, the Scottish Government gave Tearfund £100k to implement an early recovery project in Banke District, one of the worst hit districts in the country.
The project supported 240 households to rebuild their homes and provided agricultural tools, seeds and training to beneficiaries to enable them to get back to their land and to start farming again.
Hira Prashad
Hira Prashad Tharu is 38 years old. He lives with his wife, their 19 year old daughter and their two sons who are 15 and 11 years old. They live in LaLahi Village in Raptisonary Gaupalika in Banke District. When the heavy rainfall in August 2017 caused severe flooding, Banke District was one of the worst affected regions in Nepal with 50,000 people affected and 8 deaths, as well as large scale loss of food stocks and crops.
Before the floods came Hira Prashad and his family lived happily in their village, supported by his work as a farmer. On 11 August the unusually heavy rains caused their village to flood and destroyed the family home. The house collapsed, their paddy crops were destroyed and the waters washed away most of the family's food stores, seeds and clothes. The items they lost in the flood also included the children's school uniforms and books.
"I was emotionally broken and panicked as the flood had taken my house and everything my family needed to sustain our lives."
For days after the flood Hira Prashad and his wife had very little food to eat, giving whatever little they had to their children. They got sick from eating decaying food. Their children were unable to attend school for a month whilst the family saved up to purchase school uniforms and books again to replace those lost in the flood.
Saving money to replace things lost in the flood is especially difficult now as Hira Prashad no longer feels able to travel for seasonal migrant labour work which he used to do to supplement his farming income as he fears what would happen to his family if another flood comes and he is not there to help them.
When the flood waters eventually receded after a couple of weeks, they left large amounts of silt behind on the family's land, making it impossible to begin planting crops for the next harvest season.
Hira Prashad and his family received help from the Scottish Government funded Early Recovery Project in Banke District. Tearfund and its partner, INF, worked together to provide him and his family with the agricultural tools, seeds and shelter materials they needed to rebuild their home and livelihoods.
He was also given an orientation on how to contract a house using flood and earthquake resilient contruction techniques. He has since used this knowledge to build a new home for his family. The family are now happily living in their newly constructed home and growing vegetables for their daily consumption.
I was excited and hopeful after I realised someone had come to help me... before I had a mud and thatch house, but now I have a stronger home which we feel safe and secure in.
When asked how the family's life would have been different if Tearfund and INF had not been able to help, he said: "We would have been in debt and I would have had to leave the village in search of daily wage labour to earn the money I needed to reconstruct our family home and rebuild our livelihood."
Hira Prashad remains hopeful for the future and says that his family are happily living together and are no longer afraid.
