From left to right in the photo above are some of the World Renew staff and partners supporting us: Myself (Grace Wiebe) Senior Project Manager; Ken Kim, World Renew’s Director of Disaster Response; Rajendra Gautam, World Renew Construction Project Manager; Tineke Morren, Program Officer from Woord & Daad; Bertine Vermeer, Project Manager Board of Special Needs; Aising Tamang, World Renew Community Organizer and an Elder from ward 7; Rubas Tamang, World Renew Hygiene Educator; Greta Harsevoort, World Renew International Relief Manager; and Sanjay Sharma, World Renew Procurement & Logistics Manager.
From this vantage point four of the wards where World Renew has implemented its response to the Nepal Earthquake are visible. Though cool at night, it does warm up in the day to 18-20 degrees. On this sunny day, you can see the reflection off the shiny roofs of the temporary shelters erected from the Corrugated Galvanized Iron (CGI) sheets World Renew provided for all nine wards of this VDC, Manakamana, 962 families in total. You can tell it gets a lot warmer in the day than at night as I didn’t have to wear my vest or jacket in the day time.
The day before, our partner Nico Smith from Dorcas Aid from the Netherlands, was also in this mountainous community, visiting the Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project they had supported. Today, I am here to review that project which was recently completed and visit some of the recipients. It is the first time Ken Kim, the director of Disaster Response for World Renew has been able to come out and see the work WR is doing in Nepal and meet the direct staff.
The walls of the church where the community gathers were reduced to ½ the height by the earthquake
On this day, February 24th, 2016, the members of the community gathered in the church in Ward Seven to thank us for restoring water to their community. You can see in the background that the walls of this church where the community gathers were reduced to ½ the height by the earthquake and there is a new temporary roof, also made out of CGI sheets.
After a ten minute drive from the church and a 15 minute walk uphill to the river and water source, I got to see what they were so happy about. 
There I saw the completed twin intake tanks that house the water. One was repaired as it was damaged by the earthquake, and a second intake tank was newly constructed to increase the volume of water available, transported by PCV pipe down to Ward Seecn. One of the pipes had to traverse a deep ravine which required quite technical feet to install a cable crossing. All together we restored four water sources in Manakamana VDC. The other two were in ward 6 and 8. Two 1,000 litre water tanks were delivered to Ward 8 to store the water; one in the community and one at the school.
Sawyer Water Filters were also distributed to schools and groups of four or five homes to share, as each has a lifespan of 1,000,000 gallons of potable drinking water when backwashed properly. Each filter is certified for ABSOLUTE microns; that means there is no pore size larger than 0.1 or 0.02 micron in size. This makes it impossible for harmful bacteria, protozoa, or cysts like E. coli, Giradia, Vibrio cholerae and Salmonella typhi (which cause Cholera and Typhoid) to pass through the Sawyer PointONE™ biological filter. At 7 log (99.99999%) the filter attains the highest level of filtration. Click here to learn more!
We had the fun experience of listening to one of the child clubs perform a song on hygiene practices
We also had the fun experience of listening to one of the ten child clubs established to teach hygiene in the community perform a song for us that they learned to remember easily and in a fun way best practices.
Earlier that week, six Nuwekot District officials and local politicians from four parties visited World Renew’s work to date in Wards Two through Nine to monitor our work. They toured the household toilets and temporary shelter. They had personal interviews with the Principal of School (ward 8 & 5) regarding Child Club, ODF and Filter Distribution. They took interviews with the Ward leader and Water Usage Committee members about our work. The community gave positive responses to the team. The team made the trek up to recovered water sources of Wards 6 and 8 and the water cable crossing of Ward Seven. The team from the District Disaster Response Council, the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction, and the Department of Water and Sanitation highly appreciated our work. The DWASH representative (Mrs. Bhabanee Sapkota) informed us that our monitoring was the best monitoring to date.
Many thanks to the WASH team led by Indra Moelyowati, and all the rest of the World Renew direct staff for executing a fine project.