As a consequence of the recent earthquakes some 10,000 schools, more than 600 health clinics and close to 550 cultural heritage sites have been damaged.  In many rural areas, clinics are used as community centers promoting awareness campaigns such as reproductive health, health literacy, and, in some cases, even conducting micro finance and micro health insurance programs.

For spiritual Nepali people, the destruction  of so many temples in the Kathmandu valley was especially heart-wrenching.  But the destruction was wide spread and many individuals value the temples as much as, or more than their own homes: when asked about her damaged home, a woman in a village in Sankhu, pointed to a temple and pleaded for help.  This was the motivation for the 1-1-1 concept.

Taken together, the clinic, the school, and the temple can be a social capital building vehicle. Thus, PNMF and its collaborators believe that the best way to rebuild Nepal’s villages is to begin at their hearts: by re-building the clinics, the schools, and the temples that provide the lifeblood of a community. To that end, PNMF is proposing to use Bahunepati as a model project.

Once this project is completed in Bahunepati, the lessons learned there in terms of design, execution, and community participation will be used in other communities to promote similar construction projects.Click here to watch the video.

The women’s community center project details can be found here.