LEE COUNTY – Recent unrest in Kathmandu has increased the need for awareness around Nepal and the local non-governmental organization Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation.
The group spearheaded by Lee County educator Ernie Schiller is watching with keen interest as a new regime is set up following unrest by Gen Zers who rallied against the former prime minister, prime minister, and parliament who had shut down social media in the country.
Now a 72-year-old woman, Sushila Karki, has been installed and is working with the younger generation Nepalese to stand up a new government, while the others exiled themselves to area military bases.
The protest resulted in the pillaging and burning of presidential palaces and parliament buildings where cash and precious metals were discovered including a new bunker under construction to hide the resources. The rebel crowds not only railed against the shuttering of communication, but also against decades for corruption.
Schiller, who maintains contact with the other NGOs working to help stabilize the new regime and create awareness around projects underway, said Gen Z’ers burned the cash, but held the gold to go toward the new regime.
“The government has been corrupt for at least 16 years,” Schiller said.
“It was 16 years ago that a crazed nephew of the king and queen killed 54 people including security guards. He killed them all so that threw the whole country in a turmoil. They kind of wanted to go back to the monarchy, but that didn’t stick so they ended up settling for like a democratic Maoist sort of government.”
Schiller said it took five years to rewrite their Constitution and elect a new Prime Minister and Parliament. He said his 12 trips to the country in the past 10 years have been very under the radar so there was no interruption in his work educating students there.
The government was only giving 11.5 cents per student to the schools, so Schiller has been raising money through the NGO and taking it over to the country. However, it wasn’t uncommon for them to ask for 25 to 30% of the funding and that was siphoned off to the regime.
Before the last trip the country, Schiller said there was a large teacher strike that left students out of classrooms for almost a month. Teachers there may make $200 per month and must travel long distances to schools, sometimes up to 200 miles away, where they are stationed away from their families.
Five days before he was set to leave, the strike ended and they were able to make the journey. Upon arrival, several other uprisings occurred and Schiller’s contingency got caught up in it temporarily, but were able to get out of the country.
Then about two weeks ago, the government cut off all the social networks including Facebook, Messenger, X, TikTok, WhatsApp, and others causing the Gen Zers to spill into the streets of the capital and topple the government.
In the melee, more than 70 Nepalese students were shot in killed in violence that went from rubber bullets and tear gas to real bullets. A college student the foundation helped get into secondary school just missed being shot and dragged a friend out of the uprising who had been shot in the head and killed.
The people of Kathmandu then joined the rebellion, and the regime was toppled and burned.
Schiller said the foundation, which originally was formed after a massive earthquake devastated the country, is still in the middle of about a dozen projects that have been impacted by the recent unrest. However, he said the school and educational systems were not harmed in the process.
He said his next trip isn’t being planned until the spring of 2026 because of the recent instability.
“I won’t take anybody to an unstable situation. We can live with a corruption. That never bothered me. Because we never bothered them and it was stable. But if it’s unstable, we can’t go,” he said.
He said the next three or four weeks will be telling as to what the previous regime is planning, if anything, and how stabile Karki’s installation will be.
Schiller said the best thing people locally can do to help the effort is visit the website at https://rebuildnepaleducation.org/ and get some awareness of what projects are underway and then help with any financial support possible. A donation link is available at the upper left of the homepage.
The group's Facebook page is located at https://www.facebook.com/p/Rebuild-Nepal-Education-100054508598632/.
“I wish everybody would go to our website and take a look at what we're doing. I think people sometimes get numb about the news, and they get numb about what's happening, and they get numb about fundraising because everybody's doing it,” he said. “But when you have a third world country that's trying to stand on its own, they need our support now more than ever.
“We have to prop up a nation. I think even in the strife that we're having in our own nation I think we need to think about somebody in a third world country and somehow try to prop them up.”
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