The World Food Programme (WFP) is helping families to get back on their feet and rebuild their destroyed communities through emergency employment schemes.
Fifty-year-old Man Bahadur Praja recalls how the devastating 25 April earthquake that destroyed his family's home also left him and his family hungry and penniless.
Relief and recovery with employment programme
“I spent three nights at the banks of the nearby river under the open skies, with no food,” says the normally feisty Praja. This is the second time that a disaster has taken away his livelihood. In 2003, he was so angry with floods destroying his crops that he filed a legal case against the river.
But this time there will be no need for lawsuits against nature. WFP is helping Praja’s family of five, along with thousands of others in Nepal affected by the quake, to get back on their feet following the disaster. As well as providing an emergency income, the food-for-assets programme is also helping to rehabilitate the severely battered community. Praja, along with members of 290 other households in his village have been hired by WFP to clear debris, construct temporary shelters and plant cash crops.
Assistance at the right time
The money he earns, about US$80 for 20 days work, is desperately needed. The family lives in the Makwanpur District, south of Kathmandu, more than one and a half hours from the nearest road. The earthquake has not only displaced the family from their home, it also ruined 250 kgs of stored millet and killed their goats and chickens. Landslides after the earthquake have swept away the family’s crop of broom grass plants, causing a loss of about 25,000 Nepali Rupees (US$250), a significant amount in a country where GDP per capita is just US$420 a year.
WFP helps families keep their children in school
However, by participating in the WFP programme, Praja has been able to plant 2,500 saplings of broom grass, 200 banana plants and constructed 50 pits to plant lemons. “This year I will have enough income to buy rice,” he says. “I am more concerned about my children than myself and my wife. Despite the hardships, I am still sending my children to school.”
Villagers from this community say they have utilised the money they earn to buy food, zinc sheets to rebuild their homes and medicine.
Story by Ramjee Dahal