Dear All Hands & Hearts Family,
This week, I kissed my boys, Lukas (12) and Frans (9), goodbye and sent them off to school.
After a long summer, there is something almost restorative about watching your children leave again: the backpacks, the lunchboxes, the excitement over new books, and the slight nervousness about the teacher they will meet, and whether the older children were right after all.
Just last week, however, the world was watching Nepal.
Devastating flash floods swept through communities, destroying homes and taking lives. For days, helicopters moved in and out in an increasingly desperate search for those still missing. The chances of finding people alive became smaller by the hour, but the hope did not disappear.
For the All Hands & Hearts family, Nepal is not somewhere we simply respond to. It is somewhere we belong.
We have been working in Nepal for more than a decade. We first arrived after the 2015 earthquakes and, together with our Nepali team, went on to build schools across the country, including in Nuwakot. So when the floods came, we knew where to go.
Our school communities are safe and accounted for. Gambhir, Pradeep and Rupa, now joined by international staff, have been working day and night to help stabilize the most basic human needs: food, clean water, shelter, generators, PPE, hygiene and children’s kits.
In the days ahead, we are strengthening displacement centers with showers, bathrooms and handwashing stations. This is the work we know. We are good at building. It is simply who we are.
But as we move through the communities, we are also seeing what comes next.
Schools have been heavily damaged. Others are being used as temporary shelters by families who have lost their homes. And this is where the immediate response becomes something longer-term.
📍 Dhauleshwori School – Chaku, Sindhupalchok District, Nepal
Schools sit at the heart of a community. They are places for children to learn, but they are also part of the infrastructure that allows a community to recover. When children have a safe place to return to, parents have more freedom to rebuild their homes, restore their livelihoods and begin putting their lives back together.
That is why we are making a commitment: 20 schools. Two years. $5 million.
Over the next two years, we aim to raise $5 million to rebuild 20 schools in the communities that need them most.
We already have a match for the first $300,000 in donations as part of our Back to School Campaign. Will you join us?
With so much gratitude,
Nicolette Koeman
Chief Engagement Officer
Help us rebuild 20 schools in Nepal
Getting children back to school is not the final step of recovery. It is one of the things that makes recovery possible.
Thank you for standing with the children and families of Nepal.
