On April 25, 2015, Nepal was struck by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake. Nearly 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 suffered injuries. Seventeen days later there was another major quake, of magnitude-7.3. Thirty-nine of the nation’s 75 districts, with a population of 8 million people, about a third of the national population, were affected. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything. More than 600,000 homes, schools and health posts were destroyed and more than 288,000 were damaged. The quakes’ strongest impact was in remote rural areas, making initial response extremely challenging.

Roy Francis MM, a former Special Forces soldier and Himalayan mountaineer, set about raising money to help with immediate relief. Many of his friends in South West France, where he now lives, and in the UK, joined the effort and Aide Népal Magnoac (ANM) was born. As international aid was providing the essentials (shelters, blankets etc), Roy and his team decided to concentrate on helping the children in the remote villages of Nuwakot District by rebuilding schools. Money was raised in a variety of ways; quizzes, clothes sales, coffee mornings, a concert, raffles etc. Within one year, we raised enough money to help rebuild the school in Taruka village.  In 2019, in collaboration with a Canadian group, the second Aide Népal School was built and opened in Dangsing.

Late in 2019, we provided computer equipment and training for teachers, and the Nepalese Kiwanis paid for internet connections, most important as children leaving the village schools without IT knowledge were disadvantaged when joining secondary school.

Since those early interventions, the school in Taruka has expanded and has found a new sponsor, and the school in Dangsing now operates independently.  Aide Nepal Magnoac’s involvement has, since the onset of the Covid-19, been focussed on supporting two children’s homes in other parts of the country, which can you read about on our news page.