With boots on the ground even before the quake, the Nepal Youth Foundation has responded rapidly to the massive need for help both in Kathmandu and far-flung villages. The 25-year-old NYF has launched a major relief effort to provide immediate help for those most in need as well as long-term rebuilding.
For example, NYF has temporarily converted two of their nutritional clinics in Kathmandu and Pokhara into recovery centers caring for earthquake victims, including mothers and their newborns. NYF has used its school buses to take victims home from hospitals. They have delivered tarps, tents, food and clothing to victims in six affected districts. The organization has expanded emergency day care and learning center programs in and around Kathmandu to care for 600 children.
Based in Marin County CA, NYF has earned a seventh consecutive four-star rating, the highest possible, from Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent evaluator of charities. Certainly there are other large, well known organizations that are doing significant aid work in Nepal. But this one we can personally vouch for.
In the words of Olga Murray, NYF’s 90-year-old founder who was in Kathmandu when the quake struck, “We need you as our partner, now more than ever. We are there, procuring and transporting supplies, planning for the coming weeks of monsoon and we will be there long after the immediate relief efforts have waned… making a difference and helping people to rebuild their lives, their dreams and their futures. Your support makes this possible.”
I was in Nepal in the 1970’s and it is pretty incredible to imagine the changes that have taken place in that amazing landscape because of earthquakes. (I am now in the completely flat Florida Keys, where our highest points are the bridges going from island to island.) Help is needed, and the Nepal Youth Foundation has good track record and on hand to do things needed. I am encouraging my family and friends to donate!