SECED 2019 - School reconstruction in Nepal

Many schools in Nepal were damaged or destroyed in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, highlighting major vulnerabilities in Nepal’s school infrastructure. Schools are particularly important within communities, often acting as a centre for aid distribution and shelter following disasters. Therefore, it is vital that when these facilities are reconstructed they have an improved resilience to enable them to resist future earthquake events. Since the 2015 earthquake, school reconstruction programmes have been initiated and there are examples of good school reconstruction both within Kathmandu and in some of Nepal’s more remote areas. However, there is a wide range of challenges affecting this process, impeding successful and efficient construction. This paper highlights initial research that has identified challenges for school reconstruction programmes and reports on some pockets of good practice that have been observed. The aim is to understand what has made some projects successful, how efforts in these projects could be applied in similar locations, and how they could be adapted in order to be made suitable for other areas. The methodology used in this work was to conduct interviews with stakeholders, which identify examples of good practice from within Kathmandu and in rural case study schools, the challenges that these projects have had to overcome in order to be successful and how they achieved this. It is hoped that these findings will feed into guidance that could assist in sharing and transferring good practice to more organisations, improving the delivery of school reconstruction programmes across Nepal.

Last modified: Mon, 07 Oct 2019 15:05:36 BST