Take services to the people
Forcing aspiring migrant workers to come to Kathmandu for all paperwork is unkind […]
One Year On: Responding to Disaster in Nepal with Echoing Green
By: Blair Glencorse, founder of Accountability Lab, and Pranav Budhathoki, founder of Local Interventions Group, are Echoing Green Fellows working in Nepal. Follow their work on Twitter: @accountlab and @LIGintl. This article was originally published by HuffPost Impact. Like so many others in Nepal, Butti Gyalbo Taamangni suffered heartbreak after the devastating twin earthquakes that struck the Himalayan country last April, which killed over 8,000 people and displaced almost 3 million more. She lost her husband during the first quake, a loss compounded by two other critical problems. He was the only wage-earner in the family, so her income [...]
Our Short Experience With Disaster Accountability in Nepal
By: Patrick Xu, Harvard University. This blog post was originally published by Local Interventions Group. Austin Wu, a fellow Statistics concentrator and good friend, and I devised a senior research project based off of our existing interests: can we study how data has been used in the disaster relief process, and how data can effectively improve and eventually optimize disaster relief? Given the intensity of damage of Nepal’s most recent earthquake disasters, as well as the coincidental timing, Austin and I began to reach out to NGOs delivering aid in Nepal to begin to build a narrative of how data can [...]
Nepal Mobile Citizen Helpdesks August Update
The Mobile Citizen Helpdesks (#quakehelpdesk) are coordinated groups of volunteers who are closing information gaps and building feedback loops in the worst-affected areas of post-earthquake Nepal. The Accountability Lab and Local Interventions Group launched the Helpdesks within 24 hours of the first earthquake on April 25th. Our volunteers immediately began meeting with citizens to gather information, assess needs, and help them solve difficult problems related to the earthquake. In this way they solved hundreds of problems for citizens across the country–from helping those who could not write fill in the relevant forms to access relief, to working with political parties to make sure aid [...]
Can you stop a rumor?
By: Alison Campbell, Senior Director for Global Initiatives at Internews. This article was originally published by Internews. In Nepal, a band of local volunteers are trying — with SMS, radio, the Internet, and old fashioned door-to-door reporting. For survivors, the immediate priorities in a disaster such as an earthquake seem clear: Get to safety. Help your family and those around you. Reach the people you love and tell them, “I’m OK.” A Nepal radio reporter interviews earthquake survivors. Credit: Madhu Acharya/Internews But after the initial crisis is over, survivors are faced with a million uncertainties and questions as they try to piece together [...]
Top 10 Challenges in Nepal After the Earthquakes
By: Ashley Ann Day and Suman Parajuli, Accountability Lab Residents. The destruction caused by the Nepal earthquakes is staggering: 8,676 dead, 21,952 injured, and almost 500,000 homes destroyed. Millions of people have been affected by these natural disasters, and the trauma is far from over. Displaced citizens living in tents and temporary shelters are facing a host of issues, including corruption and insecurity. At the Accountability Lab, in partnership with our friends at Local Interventions Group, we’ve set up Mobile Citizen Helpdesks across the ten most-affected districts to identify these challenges and fix problems. Groups of five to seven volunteers have [...]
Shaking Up the Status Quo in Nepal
Shaking Up the Status Quo in Nepal By BLAIR GLENCORSE and SUJEEV SHAKYA. Originally Published in the New York Times. “Ke garne?” an old lady said to us, tears pouring down her cheeks, as we visited her earthquake-battered village in the Dhading district of Nepal last month: “What to do?” With a history of repeated crises — political, economic and natural — it has become the Nepali way to shrug one’s shoulders and hope for the best. Sadly, people have been hoping for a long time: even before the earthquakes, Nepal was one of the poorest, most corrupt and least [...]
The Predictable Disaster in Nepal
The Predictable Disaster in Nepal By: Blair Glencorse and Narayan Adhikari. This blog post was originally published by The Aspen Institute. Photo credit: Accountability Lab, Nepal The people of Nepal have known for a long time that a big earthquake was coming, and it finally arrived last week. Villages have been wiped out, thousands are dead or missing, and swaths of cultural heritage have been lost. Even now it is unclear what the situation is like in remote parts of districts that have been cut off from help by collapsed infrastructure and landslides. The incredible goodwill from around the world is [...]