Relief rebuilding to 25 communities in Nepal

Natural disasters are a part of life. All natural disaster cause loss in some way so was with the earthquake in 2015 in Nepal which caused loss of life and property resulting the effects on people's life, shelter, transportation, and livelihood and means to live. Despite the many losses Nepalis has shown amazing resilience. Nepalis have shown that they can rebuild, lives can be remade and start over again.

However, trauma was a big effect after that earthquake. Tewa started working for rebuilding and rehabilitation introducing the concept of "Shadow Barefoot Volunteers" where the main focus was to help community people specially women with their daily works along with the counseling so that people can heal emotionally and physically. Therfore 22 volunteers were deployed in 6 different districts Barpak, Dhading, Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Ramechhap and Sindhupalchowk. Starting from July 2015 till May 2017 with the support from our volunteers many women groups were formed, many women got their citizenships and many more including both hardware and software work.

So what after 23 months ??Are we going to leave these communities now? A big "No".

Now we have started mentorship programme in 3 different districts Barpak, Ramechhap and Sindhupalchowk where 1 volunteer in one district is taking care of. Hence a new work has emerged and works are done from Learning, Monitoring and Evaluation perspective. Now these 3 volunteers will work closely to find out the changes that they have brought in the community within 23 months of time. With their close observation now these 3 volunteers are mentoring women groups to look their organizations from following mentioned perspective:

• What is the regular income of the organizations (Women Groups) and what are their plans for long term sustainability?
• Have these organizations (Women Groups) invested for community development? Have these organizations (Women Groups) been able to utilize the maximum use of available resource?
• What are the changes happened or going to happen after the capacity building within the organization (Women Groups)?

These 3 volunteers visit the districts and communities that they worked for 23 months once a month.  These 3 volunteers Nirmala at Barpak, Kamala at Ramechhap and Panmaya at Sindhupalchowk are working not because they are unemployed, infact these 3 women are the founder of 3 different organizations in their own districts Dang, Kathmandu and Sindhupalchowk respectively.  Working for 23 months at Barpak, Ramechhap and Sindhupalchowk they really felt that those women groups and communities really need some mentorship to move ahead and hence Tewa agreed to this point and mentorship started.

Leaving their own organizations back behind those districts and moving forward to work on other districts (Barpak, Ramechhap and Sindhupalchowk) just to make women groups empower is really an appreciate able task. They have the feelings of volunteerism. As expressed in the UN Charter, volunteers are motivated by values like those of justice, equality and freedom; these 3 volunteers have proved it. As said "a society which supports and encourages different forms of volunteering is likely to be a society which also promotes the well being of its citizens", we should also be thankful to those women groups and societies of Barpak, Ramechhap and Sindhupalchowk for accepting these 3 dynamic women who have represented as Tewa's volunteers.  These 3 strong women are the real heroes.