Mission East and the Karnali Integrated Rural Development and Research Centre (KIRDARC) have formed a partnership to run projects in clean water systems, hygiene training, and community organization in isolated Humla and Mugu Districts of northwestern Nepal.

 
KIRDARC and Mission East share the same goals in the region and we believe that working together – using KIRDARC’s experience and local knowledge combined with Mission East’s resources and expertise – we can improve the lives of people in the particularly poor and isolated Karnali zone.
Projects are listed at left. These projects have expanded Mission East’s work in Nepal exponentially and led to a large-scale and close working relationship with KIRDARC in just two years.
A Mission East assessment team consisting of team leader Graeme Glover, Kurt Bauer (water and sanitation expert), Andrea Massini (agriculture expert), three staff members from KIRDARC, and three porters recruited locally, walked for four days from Nepal’s most northerly airport to reach these districts in December 2006 – January 2007.
After discussions with national and regional leaders, other NGOs and Nepalese organizations, and most importantly, residents themselves, Mission East identified the Soru Belt area and Humla and Mugu districts as having the most critical needs within the Karnali zone.

Involving the community

Mission East and KIRDARC organized community meetings through local leaders and community members to identify and prioritize problems and their causes.
The main problems identified by residents themselves were: high incidences of disease, child mortality, and poor health; food shortages, poor diets, and insufficient nutrition; lack of transport infrastructure (foot paths and bridges), causing people to spend much time collecting water or travelling to markets or medical facilities; lack of electricity; and poor health and education provision.

Mission East and KIRDARC’s joint projects focus on:

Disease and child mortality, and

• poor general health through the construction of building clean water systems
• hygiene education to prevent further spread of diseases;
• building irrigation systems
• training in better agriculture techniques to provide more reliable harvests and more varied diets
• building the capacity of the villages to organize themselves and work on their own self-reliance.