Kopila Valley Update: Adapting Our Programs for 2020
Friday, June 26, 2020
Dear BlinkNow family,
I want to bring you and all my supporters up to date on the operations of BlinkNow during the COVID-19 crisis.
We had many things going for us as this crisis hit: an amazing Nepali team, robust support from our donors, and a strong strategic vision and operational support from our US staff. When it became clear that Nepal was going into lockdown, we began an immediate programming pivot, with a focus on delivering our programs in new ways due to the effects of COVID-19.
We put our education and counseling staff to the task of setting up weekly distance-learning lessons for our 450 students and conducting regular check-ins with the hundreds of families we serve. We immediately began procuring emergency food for our 450 children, their families, and the most vulnerable members of our community. We have now provided 1,756 food kits to families since February alone. Our women’s cooperative immediately started making masks and necessary PPE items. We sequestered the kids in our Children’s Home with our terrific house parents and made sure our alumni felt supported through our Futures counseling team. My husband Jeremy and I made the decision for him to head to his family home in Canada with our daughter Ruby, while I stayed in Surkhet to oversee the transition of life during the national lockdown in everchanging times.
Then the second crisis wave hit when nearly 170,000 Nepali migrant workers flooded across the India-Nepal border desperately trying to get home to Nepal after months without work. These returning Nepali citizens were coming across the borders in huge numbers and no provisions were in place to provide shelter, safe transportation, food, water, and other survival necessities. In our province, we started to see innocent people dying as they went without food and water for days. When we looked into the eyes of these women, children, and innocent people, we felt we had to address this humanitarian crisis. Some of our Nepali staff and I began work setting up food and water stations, and we launched a viral national campaign to bring awareness to the migrant issue.
Because this work required us to break quarantine, we moved into a hotel so as not to expose our children and families. Our wonderful home director, Aakriti, and our home caregivers stayed home to take care of the kids and I was in touch with them each day. During this time we asked for donations for humanitarian aid and, WOW, did you all respond! We received over 4,000 donations in just a few short weeks, many from within Nepal itself, which we immediately allocated into a separate migrant-crisis fund with strict oversight. All of these dollars have gone to immediate humanitarian aid —providing food, bedding, medicine, shelter, hygiene, and more— to over 700 quarantine centers in our region.
Finally, during the last month, we pivoted once again to work with larger organizations. Helping them set up medical teams to head to the camps to implement a telemedicine system for better preparedness for the health crisis in remote regions lacking medical infrastructure.
I say this with great humility, but I've never been more proud of our organization. In our many years in Nepal, I don't believe we've ever done greater work or saved more lives. In this case, we were in the right place at the right time and we had your funding, trust, and support. Thank you! Now that the migration surge has passed and things are better under control, we will take a step back and continue to work with partner organizations and the regional ministry as they develop long term solutions. The effectiveness of your dollars and donations translated into; 30,000 water bottles and water filtration systems, 50 tons of rice, emergency support kits for 35,400 people in 700 quarantine centers, 23,000 hot meals, 700 sets of PPE for health works, and over 37,000 high-quality masks to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Now, our team will continue to monitor the changes in Nepal and work through our strategic plan program-by-program, regularly updating how we are providing services to our families and what we need to do to adjust for the remainder of 2020, and onwards. We have the necessary structure and a team committed to adapting all of our programs and maintaining our mission—and we reevaluate the best way to reach this goal each week.
I have just traveled to Canada and after a quarantine period, I will join Jeremy and Ruby for some time with my family. Our co-founder Tope is on the ground in Nepal. Our home parents Sachyam and Aakriti are operating our home happily tucked in together. The kids are safe and happy. I will work from Canada for a while, with our team to ensure we provide the best programs and support under this new situation and continue to prepare for the future.
Thank you so much for continued support, trust, and collaboration with us at BlinkNow.
Maggie