Disaster Response - Nepal - TATA Sustainability Group

A massive underground fault line that ruptured in Nepal caused a severe earthquake in 2015, devastating thousands of villages across the country.

One Tata response flew into action in Nepal, with an intensive three-pronged approach, covering wellbeing, relief material distribution and shelter provision, to ensure faster dissemination of help. The group reached out to 12,500 individuals through relief kits and provided trauma counselling to 1,500 families across 12 districts.

In June 2016, an assessment of the group-led response was carried out by Head CSR, Tata Motors. The trained and qualified response team, the Tata values of working in communities, maintaining dignity and being politically and religiously agnostic stood out as strengths. Six of the 10 recommendations from the assessment were then incorporated in future response programmes of the Tata group.

The group also reconstructed two secondary schools in the worst affected district of Sindhupalchowk that would benefit over 600 students in the area. The schools were inaugurated by honorable Ministers of the Nepal Government, along with members from the Tata group. Currently, an additional school, Janjyoti lower secondary school is being constructed in Sindhupalchowk under the programme.

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SOS Children's Villages, was one of the Tata group's partner organisations through the rescue and relief operations after the Nepal earthquake. SOS Child Care Spaces (CCS) are in 25 locations where children are engaged all day through activities like singing, dancing, painting, reading and writing. Once the schools reopened children were sent back to live with their families. However, in areas where the displaced victims were staying, SOS had to continue as the families could not go back to their villages. As the SOS team had to continue the services, they sought help from the Tata group.

IMPACT STORY

Sirjan Danuwar

Sirjan Danuwar was one of the children who benefitted from the Child Care Spaces (CCS). His mother, Shaily, is thrilled with the learning he has received at CCS. The Danuwars slept under the open sky as their house had collapsed in the earthquake and didn't have a safe place to keep their children. "We could work on taking out our things from debris while the children were safe in CCS all day," said Shaily. The Tata group helped take care of over 1,000 children in various SOS Child Care Spaces. "We are proud to say that we (SOS Children's Village) found a very reliable partner in Tata group" says Sharkar Pradhanaga, from SOS Children's Village, Nepal.

SOS Children Village, a partner of Tata group through rescue and relief operations after Nepal Earthquake provided a safe place for children until the lives were back to normal and school were reopened.

IMPACT STORY

Pema Lama

"After the 2015 earthquake, we lost many properties and relatives in Sindhupalchowk. We also lost all the infrastructure of our school building including learning materials, library, computer lab and science lab. Aftermath of devastating earthquake, classes of our schools were running under open sky and in temporary learning center made of CGI sheet and bamboo.

With the support of Tata Group and Sipradian Sahayata Sanstha, earthquake resistant classrooms were built including facilities like separate toilets; furniture; safe drinking water. Now, at Marming School, all 230 students have regular attendance, we are using clean toilets; hand-washing station; waste collection pits; incinerator for sanitary pad dispose. I use incinerator to dispose the sanitary pads and my friends also follow it. It resulted in decrease of dropout rate of adolescent girls during the menstruation period" says Pema Lama, Student, Shree Marming Secondary School

Many students such as Pema Lama have benefited from the facilities in the newly constructed schools which has resulted in decrease in drop our rate.