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Canadians stay to help rebuild Nepal after surviving earthquake

Residents transport belongings retrieved from damaged houses following Saturday's earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal, May 1, 2015. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Mark Harris, 27, was helping some local friends build an artists’ residency centre in Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk district when the earthquake hit.

“It seemed like the end of the world,” Harris, who has been living in Nepal on and off for the last eight years, told the Toronto Star of the collapsing homes around him in the country’s hardest-hit region.

His arts centre was completely destroyed by the quake.

Instead of catching the first flight home to Barrie, however, Harris decided to stay where he’s needed, helping villagers in remote areas get access to crucial supplies.

He’s already raised more than $4,400 on Indiegogo which will go toward tents, first aid, water filters, solar mobile phone charges and food rations for 10 remote villages.

“Our mission now is to return to the region with desperately needed food and medicine, as survivors are quickly exhausting what rations could be salvaged from the ruins of their homes,” he wrote on the fundraising page.

“The immediate aim is to ensure that people will not starve for in the coming week, especially as aid has been extremely slow to arrive in the most rural areas. As much of the region is only accessible by footpaths, we will be walking village to village to set up basic camps.”

“We are seeking funding outside of the traditional NGO-model, because in this way we can ensure that 100% of our funds will go to the survivors of the Great Earthquake, and not to salaries, office staff, and other overhead.”

Harris hopes to raise at least $10,000.

“It’s just to get the first return to normalcy,” Harris said of his goal. “Just having a week where they know where their food is coming from, they know that the place they can sleep in is safe, relatively, and that the water they are drinking will not get them sick.”


Seventy-five kilometres west in Kathmandu, Kitchener couple Leah and Luke Reesor-Keller, who work in Nepal with the international development agency MCC (Mennonite Central Committee), also felt the the earth move.

“We could feel just waves — it was very much a rocking motion, as well as a shaking and rattling motion,” Leah told the Toronto Star.

Only after the violent aftershocks subsided did the Resor-Kellers discover how badly other parts of the country had been hit, specifically rural villages. Through MCC, they are currently organizing an aid project that will bring emergency food, medicine, shelter and water purifiers to the areas that suffered the worst damage.

“There are areas without good mobile phone access or road access and we still haven’t heard from them,” Leah said. “We are doing what we can to reach out to the most isolated and vulnerable.”

“The fact that we have staff that are there, they and their facilities are in good shape and we have longstanding partners from decades of being there, puts us in good shape to respond well and soon,” MCC executive director Rick Cober Bauman told CBC News, adding that the organization will also be involved in addressing the the psychological and emotional needs of those affected.

“Psychosocial responses, there’s going to be trauma and that’s often where MCC gets involved as well,” he added.

As the country rebuilds, the Canadians there believe their roles are simple ones of support. The Nepalese people are very capable of rebuilding their lives, both Harris and Leah told the Toronto Star.

“They’re not just waiting around for aid to come; they know the only people who can rebuild their country (are) themselves. I see my role as just trying to pitch in,” Harris said.