On August 26, massive floods swept through Nepal, leaving thousands of people dead, injured, or missing. The disaster caused widespread destruction to buildings and infrastructure, burying numerous facilities under deep layers of mud and debris. Among the severely damaged locations was Shree Bageshwari Secondary School, which was left completely engulfed in soil and wreckage. Recognizing the urgent need for students to resume their education, an international disaster relief team quickly mobilized to support the campus restoration efforts.

Overcoming severe resource shortages

The destruction at Shree Bageshwari Secondary School was catastrophic. The scale of the mud and debris was reminiscent of a severe flood that struck Hualien, Taiwan, the previous year, which similarly buried the National Kuanfu Commercial and Industrial Vocational High School among other schools in the area. During the recovery in Hualien, thousands of volunteers equipped with heavy machinery and ample tools were immediately available to clear the campus. In stark contrast, the recovery efforts in Nepal faced a severe shortage of equipment, heavy machinery, and available workforce.

Despite these limitations, volunteers from Singapore and Malaysia stationed in Nepal drew upon their past disaster relief experience to organize a local response. Relying heavily on manual labor and sheer determination, they successfully rallied the local community. Teachers, students, military personnel, police officers, and neighborhood residents—including women and children—all worked together to dig out the mud and clean the classrooms. The collective effort transformed a daunting task into a manageable reality, proving that limited resources could be overcome by community resilience.

Laughter returns to the classrooms

Through days of relentless labor in the mud, the community managed to clear the school grounds. On September 9, groups of students were finally able to return to Bageshwori Secondary School. Seeing the children walking through the gates in their uniforms marked a profound moment of hope for the disaster-stricken area.

Siew Yen Kong (江欣燕), a volunteer from Malaysia, recorded her observations on the day the school reopened:

On the fourteenth day following the floods in Nepal, the children put on their school uniforms and happily walked into the campus with smiles. The ground beneath their feet still bears the traces of the disaster, but the children's footsteps have already moved forward. A flood took away a lot, but it could not take away the children's anticipation of returning to school. Today, they sat back in their classrooms and brought long-lost laughter back to the campus. — Siew Yen Kong, Volunteer

The reopening of the school provided the students with a safe space to learn and allowed the community to take a significant step forward in their post-disaster recovery.

Compiled by Tzu Chi News