Earthquake resistant (anti-seismic) house project
The two mega earthquakes in April and May of 2015 have shaken the whole of Nepal and made colossal damages throughout the country. Reconstruction began after the strong aftershock on May and ANUVAM decided to help in the process.
To begin with six families were chosen from Rapchha who were/are in dire situation either financially or from family situation perspective. The houses of the chosen families were damaged severely during the earthquake and most of them were unable to build a new house on their own due to their very week financial status. Some of them were single parents and many of them had more than four dependent children.
Given the geo-location of Nepal with the high probability of frequent strong earthquake, an anti-seismic model of house has been prepared and proposed in initiation of ANUVAM and it was introduced in Rapchha by Vincent PENA one of the CAPA members who designed the house model.
The first house one this model began in late January 2017 under the guidance and supervision of Vincent PENA. And the proud recipient of the house was Sancha Bahadur Rai known as Sakal to most of the ANUVAM members. The house was designed on the traditional manner but incorporating all the modern and scientific techniques to make it earthquake resistant.
Locally available materials like stone, soil, wood have been used to the maximum during the construction but also corrugated zinc roof, sky light roof plate, paints and varnish, and wood treatment materials were purchased as well. Local people were used for both skilled and unskilled required manpower. And most importantly, a group of skilled masons and carpenters have been taught about the construction process from beginning to the end with the idea to make this process a sustainable one. Vincent PENA has personally overseen the construction process full time for the first two houses and he also supervised the construction of the other four houses periodically.
Now the whole community is adapting this construction process to ensure that their house has a better chance of withstanding strong future earthquakes.
And this project got so successful and helpful that ANUVAM is already considering the continuation of it in the form of financially supporting to build similar houses for more families who are unable to build a house by themselves.
Improved Oven
Rapchha is one of the most remote and under-developed communities of Nepal. Around five hundred families who inhabit here still use firewood to cook their food on a regular basis. The traditional houses do not have proper ventilation system so the smoke produced by the fire often roams inside the house and everybody inhale smoke on big quantity for many hours every day. The result is big percentage of the community people of all ages are suffering from smoke related diseases.
On the other hand, jungles are beginning to disappear rapidly because the community is cutting trees on big quantities for the firewood.
To address both the aforementioned problems, ANUVAM has decided to encourage the community to adopt improved oven and is providing financial incentive to build such oven. So each family who has built an improved oven and is using it regularly is offered 60 euro as to support them with the cost of building the oven.
This is a simple technology, and there are some trained manpower in Rapchha who can build this type of improved oven. Most of the required construction materials are locally available, and some parts made of iron can be purchased in Kathmandu.
The improved oven uses far less firewood to cook food and it also comes with a smoke chimney that brings the smoke out of the room. As a result, the risk of getting smoke related diseases is decreased significantly and so is the danger of deforestation.
Currently over a hundred families in Rapchha have been using improved oven and ANUVAM aims to reach a target of every single family using it in the next few years.
