More Than Rebuilding Schools
by Mari Radtke
On April 25, 2015 Nepal was struck by a primary 8.1 magnitude earthquake, based on the Richter scale. This first quake struck just before noon that day. The epicenter was just over 50 miles from the capital, Kathmandu and just over 5 miles underground.
The earthquake triggered a pair of avalanches. The avalanche on Mount Everest killed 22 people. This is considered the deadliest recorded incident on Mount Everest. A second avalanche at Langtang valley left 250 people missing.
Across a large area of central Nepal, villages were flattened. Centruies-old buildings crumbled. Aftershocks shook the land for days, adding landslides as part of the threat to the people.
The human toll following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal was far reaching and continues 8 years later. The earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and injured three times that. More than 3.5 million people were left homeless, displacing an estimated 2.6 million. Very little of the reconstruction money made it out of Kathmandu. People without land fared even worse. Those who lived in the rural regions of Nepal, the very poor, endured the most. Those are the people most helped by Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation.
Ernest Schiller, a “happily retired” science teacher was asked by the United States government to escort five students to India. They wanted to study abroad and were not allowed to do so without supervision. While in India he took time to expand his visit to Nepal, a place of interest to him since second grade. While hiking in Nepal he visited a school. Schiller recounts that first look into a pre-earthquake school, “Nothing.” He made up his mind then to return with whatever materials he could gather. Six months after the earthquake he received Facebook messages from Nepal saying, “Now we really need you. Everything you saw is gone. 9000 people died in 30 seconds.” Schiller was able to raise funds to take 500 pounds of supplies and a little money. He traveled back to Nepal and “dug in for two and a half months.”
While in Nepal he posted to his Facebook page. A former student, now a medical doctor and in Qatar, came to provide assistance. Another former student insisted that Mr. Schiller take her, her husband and their five children. Despite his initial reluctance to return, he did. That former student, a lawyer, provided all the legal work to form the 501(c)3 non-profit that is todays Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation pro-bono. His bank sponsored all the filing fees. The development of the foundation caused Schiller to go to Nepal twice a year. The 26-hour per way travel took its toll. He did get that down to once each year.
Mr. Schiller, long time friends with fellow science teacher Kevin Brasser, now retired from South O’Brien, invited Brasser to go. Brasser had been investing in the program for a while. Kevin and his wife Karen made the trip and are preparing for their third trip in May or June.
One of the fundraising tools used by the Foundation is to bring back stuff made in Nepal and sell it in the United States at a profit. The money is used entirely for supplies for the most rural of schools; for food boxes for the poorest of the poor and ingenious ways to help them help themselves.
Since the inception of Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation, according to Schiller, they have about 25,000 students. The first crop of college graduates, 46, comes this year. Their duty back to the foundation is to pay it forward 3 times. College is in Kathmandu. Most families cannot help but some contribute vegetables and very little money.
Schools in the mountains and rural regions of Nepal serve about 600 students. The children walk for hours, one way to get there. They return home on the weekends and walk the return route in the wee hours of Monday morning. The cost to educate a student, preschool to 3rd grade is $27.00 per year. A child 4th – 8th grade costs $54.00 per year and high school is $108.00 per year. College is $1200.00 per year.
Ernest Schiller has been to Nepal eleven times since 2016. “It is so enriching,” he says. “They are the poorest people, but they are so happy.”
Rebuild Nepal Education has approximately 150 volunteers from across the globe. Schiller says, “It’s quite a thing. It’s become quite involved. I was quite happy being a retired teacher. But I am quite happier helping other people.”
The volunteers pay their own way to and from Nepal. All of the donated funds go to a Nepali child. The organization has no payroll. The volunteers have no perks. It all goes to the children.
ONe educational technique to improve the agrarian way of life in Nepal was to purchase pregnant goats and teach the families how to raise them and use the goat’s milk. The families are educated in increasing the head and fully using the animals for food. Methods for raising crops, native crops, are introduced. The goal is to raise the standard of living for the Nepalese people without interfering with their culture.
As the first benefactors of Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation graduate from college and begin their lives, the effects will begin to show from within.
To learn more about the foundation go to www.rebuildnepaleducation.org. Donations can be made to the gofundme page, smile.amazon page or the Venmo page.