RNEF about 25% short of trip goal

LEE COUNTY – The local contingent heading to Nepal to help deal with the humanitarian crisis there is just two weeks from traveling, but about 25% off fundraising goals.
Ernie Schiller, co-founder of Rebuild Nepal Education Foundation will be taking a group of seven volunteers, four from Lee County, to a treacherous area of the flood-riddled country to not only provide educational resources, but this time to help with recovery efforts.
The country was devastated with flooding in August, while still recovering from multiple earthquakes going back to 2015. Those earthquakes have required reset after reset, and now the country is facing yet another reset.
National news reporting has a body count of recent flooding and mudslides at 4,000, but Schiller said those may be a little sanitized as numbers from his localized sources are upwards of 10,000 to 12,000 when all recoveries have been completed.
Schiller has made 13 trips since 2015 and one of the earlier trips in 2016 he helped recover bodies form the Gortha earthquake in 2015. He said he doesn’t have the emotion to do that work again.
“I helped dig a few bodies out in 2016. We’re not going to do that again. It was too much,” he said.
“This team we’ll already be faced with critical issue like dealing with more than 50 little huthomes just up from the foothills where at least one person from each home is gone. Students...parents, gone. That has been an emotional roller coaster for me. The team I’m developing to go there is getting ready for the emotion of this.”
Two members of the group including Schiller will fly out to Nepal on Oct. 12 to make sure everything is in place for the rest of the group to come out a few days later. But Schiller said there are locals already on the ground doing a lot of the foundational work with the support of RNEF. He said they will be visiting more than 50 schools in the country to deliver educational supplies as part of their main program emphasis.
“Now we have this tremendous humanitarian crisis. What you’ve seen on television is just a little of the reality of the conditions over there,” he said.
RNEF had to set a loftier fundraising goal this year to not only complete the mission work of rebuilding education, which is now essentially being reset from square one in a good part of the areas torn apart by the flooding and mudslides, but to help with recovery.
“I would say we’re at about 75% of our goal and it’s incredible how our network has expanded. We have people from France and Canada being a part of the effort, and I don’t know how they even found out about us,” Schiller said.
“We have 60 some volunteers over there working massively getting ready for this onslaught of what we’re doing. Fundraising has been my focus. But this year is different. I’ve never in the past 12 years had to buy a truck load of rice. That was a struggle for me to overcome and accomplish.”

He said the rice will be delivered via trucks which will have to traverse the area and look for suitable passage to the villages.
But he said the needs now don’t just stop at rice. He said cooking equipment, fuel, and utensils have been washed away from thousands of families in the area. He said families have lost livestock that provide resources for years, cooking oils, spices, and money for vegetables and fruits.
“These folks' animals were washed away, their fields are now covered with 20 feet of mud, rock, sediment, bodies. Many, many people there have nothing left.”
He said Red Cross and government officials have been on site, but that initial phase of recovery is ending and the secondary recovery efforts, including the expanding RNEF efforts are beginning now.
Infrastructure will be sketchy at best when they arrive and Schiller isn’t sure what pathways will be available to get to the most remote areas where the need is the greatest. He said 41 bridges are gone along three rivers in the country, and he’s hoping that some type of temporary bridge has been constructed otherwise they may actually have to use a pulley system to get across some of the channels.
“It’s like your sitting in an amusement park ride and you pull yourself across and that’s about a five-block span,” he said. “But that would actually save us a day.”
He said holding centers up and down the rivers that are flooded due to monsoons and glacial melting are trying to stay viable.
The Trishuli River and Bhote Koshi/Lhende Khola river valleys suffered catastrophic flash floods in late August following a massive glacier collapse and landslide, while subsequent heavy monsoon rains in the past few weeks caused severe destruction along the Kali Gandaki, Marsyangdi, and Tinau rivers, according to US Geological Survey reports.
Schiller said he has seen images of young children carrying toddlers and infants through the flooded areas looking for parents who have been swept away.
“We need prayers first for the team and those we are going to help. People are hurting their so bad. This was horrific,” he said.
“The next thing is serious donations. Our area has opened their hearts and billfolds, but if someone hasn’t and sees what is actually needed here, we would appreciate a Venmo, or Paypal, or check at Pilot Grove Savings Bank, or through the groups GoFundMe account. The links for those are here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WRTCJS3CAGJ2C; https://account.venmo.com/u/RebuildNepalEducation-ErnestSc; https://rebuildnepaleducation.org/.
Schiller said the biggest reason for the heavier lift with fundraising is the unknown. He said some families have no home, not even a tent as everything has been washed away. And schools are trying to get up and going again. Volunteers are even back to sewing outfits for preschool and younger children.
“There’s just no way I can reach everyone personally, so those volunteers on site are doing that work for us,” he said.