Schoolchildren in Thulosirubari

… go! Not only Olympic athletes are currently waiting for this call. People in Thulosirubari are in the starting blocks too. Hopefully we are only few days away from the start of the construction of the new school at this small village in Sindhupalchowk District in Nepal. According to the German aid organization “Nepalhilfe Beilngries” finally all bureaucratic barriers have been broken down so that the school for 700 children and adolescents in Thulosirubari can be rebuilt. That has been and will be the goal of the aid project “School up!” that I had launched along with the professional climbers Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner from Austria and Ralf Dujmovits from Germany a year ago. The “Gerlinde and Ralf School”, which had been inaugurated only in 2009, was so badly damaged by the devastating earthquake in Nepal on 25 April 2015 that it had to be demolished.

Long and winding road

Stones for the new school

“We are going to do our next meeting with the contractor this week, after that we’ll start the work,” Arjun Gatraj, the chairman of the school committee in the village, which lies some 70 kilometers east of Kathmandu, writes to me. Sunil Shrestha and Shyam Pandit, the liaison men of “Nepalhilfe Beilngries” in Nepal, have completed a truly “Olympic program” in recent months to obtain all permits and stamps for the construction project. Those who (often with good reason) complain about cumbersome and excessive bureaucracy in western countries could experience in Nepal that an increase is possible: The road through the involved authorities is even much longer and more winding. Many employees in Nepalese offices feel and act just as if they were little kings, because they know that things cannot go on without their permission.

Only two-storied buildings

The new school building is to be built here

Thanks to Sunil and Shyam this probably most difficult phase of the project is now behind us. In the first of three construction stages the first building section with classrooms is to be built. The Nepalese government has ruled that due to the risk of earthquakes only two-storied school buildings should be built in the future – in the form of the letters H or U. Of course, I will continue to keep you up to date about what will happen in Thulosirubari. Arjun will provide me with first-hand information and pictures of the construction progress.

Thanks to your donations the construction is about to start at all. So far we have collected more than one third of the required sum. We need more donations for “School up!” to finance also the second and third construction phase. Here again the bank account in Germany:

Recipient: Nepalhilfe Beilngries e.V.
Bank: Volksbank Bayern Mitte eG/Germany
IBAN: DE05 7216 0818 0004 6227 07
BIC/SWIFT-Code: GENODEF1INP
Intended purpose: Gerlinde and Ralf School

Please tell others as well! Thank you so much!

P.S.: If you want to read my previous articles on this subject – including those about my visit in the earthquake region last March – simply click on the top bar at “School up!”, there you will find all posts concerning our aid project.