Deliver Aid to Earthquake Survivors in Nepal

“We have named this campaign Sneha, meaning love.”

Our grassroots partners at the organization WOREC have been delivering lifesaving aid like food, clothing, tents and medical kits to Nepal’s earthquake survivors in ten different districts. And the name they gave their campaign reveals exactly what drives their tireless work.

Thank you for helping them to turn their love for Nepal’s women and families into action. Here are more photos and updates from our sisters mobilizing the Sneha Campaign.

In one community in Kavre district, our partners found 60 people from 10 families staying in a single tent. Going from community to community, they saw this reality repeated. Among these survivors were often young children and breastfeeding mothers. These mothers face the risk of sickness and infection without a clean and secure way to breastfeed. WOREC has provided them with “lactating women’s kits,” which include soap, towels, cotton swabs and clean underclothes. They have also distributed staple food items like rice and cooking oil, along with extra tents for temporary shelter.

Responding to this urgent need, our partners have created a center for mothers with newborns where they will receive food and care – a safe space. Women there can receive counseling services and have a comfortable place – equipped with basic medicines, bedding, clean clothing and more – to care for themselves and their children.

Overwhelmed hospitals have been forced to turn survivors away without treatment. And in many tent camps and communities, our partners noted that there was no medical relief targeted at the particular needs of women and adolescent girls. Our partners at WOREC have provided first aid care for people out of reach of medical services. They have distributed basics like sanitary pads and other feminine hygiene supplies.

Your support enables these women first responders to act quickly and meet the needs of the most marginalized after disaster. Thank you.

“We are in shock, pain and in complete devastation. In spite of all this, we are together.”

These words from one of our partners in Nepal still leap out at me. Many of their homes have been smashed and destroyed. Some of them are mourning loved ones who perished. But they are persevering through this terrible time.

Thank you for standing with them now. You responded immediately to our call for emergency aid after the earthquake, and your support is lifesaving.

We have been in constant contact with our local partners there, a grassroots women’s organization called WOREC. Thanks to their local connections, your support is able to reach vulnerable women and families in the most devastated areas.

Here are some updates about what MADRE members make possible. With your help, our partners are:

• Reaching out through local activist networks to send food, tents and basic essentials to ten of Nepal’s hardest hit districts.
• Creating safe spaces in the hard-hit city of Kathmandu and surrounding communities for women to receive urgent aid like food, along with counseling to combat trauma.
• Working with local hospitals to ensure that women’s needs are met. Our partners are distributing 10,000 health kits for pregnant women and mothers with newborns. Kits include baby clothes, blankets, diapers, basic hygiene supplies for mothers and more. Click here to see photos of our partners in action. 

Our partners at WOREC told me that they’re seeing women with newborns being discharged from hospitals with no place to go. They’re seeing pregnant women struggling to survive on the streets after their homes were destroyed. So right now, they’re mobilizing urgently to open up a support space for these women to receive basics like food, emergency shelter and vital care.

Thank you for making this crucial support for women and families possible.

With hope,

Yifat Susskind
Executive Director

P.S. The mother and her 3-day-old baby in the photo were discharged from the hospital. With her home in ruins, she had nowhere to go -- but our grassroots partners are her lifeline, with food, clothing and care.