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Mission Rebuild Nepal

About

What the organisation is for

To raise and manage fund from general public and organizations willing to help underprivileged people in Nepal; plan organize, execute, and evaluate the activities in Nepal for uplifting the life standard of rural Nepalese people especially in natural disaster affected or highly impoverished areas.

On the record

Legal status
501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the state of Virginia
Founded
June 2015
Registered office
520 Springvale Rd, Great Falls, VA 22066, USA
Contact
missionrebuildnp@gmail.com · +1-240-636-4752
Governance documents

How it started

  1. 01

    25 Apr 2015

    Earthquake in Nepal

    The earthquake of 25 April destroyed almost every house in Sipapokhare VDC, Sindhupalchowk, one of the worst affected areas in the country, and left thousands of families across the district without shelter with the monsoon approaching.

  2. 02

    29 Apr 2015

    On the ground by the fourth day

    Mission Rebuild Nepal was operating from the fourth day after the earthquake, months before it formally existed. Dr Baroon Rai, an intensive care physician, took unpaid leave, raised about $20,000 and supplies from his own hospital and flew out. Dr Sandesh Pandit left Oregon carrying $30,000 of supplies. He, Dr Rai and Dr Madan Uprety met in transit and planned the operation on the way in.

  3. 03

    12 May 2015

    Second earthquake strikes while the team is in the field

    Board members were distributing relief packages at Bhotang, a remote northern VDC of Sindhupalchowk on the Chinese border, when the second major earthquake struck. The team had flown in the previous night with the help of the Nepalese Army, having set out on 11 May with four doctors, nurses, a physician assistant and a logistics team. Within a minute the mission changed from relief to emergency medical care. Dr Dikshanta Prasai and Yuvraj Sharma were nearly killed on the mountain. The helicopter that had carried the team to Bhotang crashed a week later.

  4. 04

    22 May 2015

    From Mission Critical Nepal to Mission Rebuild Nepal

    The emergency relief operation, run until then under the name Mission Critical Nepal, became a reconstruction organisation. Three days earlier the team had completed five model homes and begun buying materials for 200 houses at Sipapokhare VDC in Sindhupalchowk, a village where almost every home had been destroyed.

  5. 05

    17 Jun 2015

    Mission Rebuild Nepal formally constituted

    The organisation was founded in June 2015 and incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in Virginia, with its principal office in Fairfax County. A summary posted on 17 June records the week's work: the 501(c)(3) application filed with the IRS; bylaws, an accountability framework and a template memorandum of understanding written and published on the website; and the organisation's own bank and PayPal accounts opened. An administrative expense policy adopted on 22 June committed board members and volunteers to fund the administrative costs of the first 250 homes from a seed fund, so that donations went to construction.

  6. 06

    30 Jun 2015

    501(c)(3) status approved

    The Internal Revenue Service approved the application filed earlier in the month, making donations from the United States tax deductible. On the same day the team reported seven houses finishing that week and 52 due within the month.

The arc, in the order it happened

2015

  • 25 Apr 2015Earthquake in NepalRescue & Relief
  • 29 Apr 2015On the ground by the fourth dayRescue & Relief
  • 7 May 2015Relief reaches 6,100 peopleRescue & Relief
  • 12 May 2015Second earthquake strikes while the team is in the fieldRescue & Relief
  • 20 May 2015First accounts published
  • 22 May 2015From Mission Critical Nepal to Mission Rebuild Nepal
  • 14 Jun 2015Transition home prototype completedRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 17 Jun 2015Mission Rebuild Nepal formally constituted
  • 30 Jun 2015501(c)(3) status approved
  • 11 Jul 2015Free legal clinics for Temporary Protected Status
  • 19 Aug 2015Monsoon stops work at AdchaleRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 12 Sept 2015First handover ceremony at SipapokhareRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 15 Nov 2015Border blockade halts constructionRebuilding Sipapokhare

2016

  • 16 Mar 2016Second handover ceremony, 368 houses deliveredRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 11 May 2016Handover list published, house by houseRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 19 May 2016Kaalo Moso anti-fraud policy adopted
  • 30 Jul 2016First 5K Run and Walk for Nepal, Salt Lake CityRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 29 Sept 2016Demographics of the households served publishedRebuilding Sipapokhare
  • 21 Nov 2016Final handover ceremony at SipapokhareRebuilding Sipapokhare

2017

  • 14 Jun 2017Every house counted, and the project closedRebuilding Sipapokhare

2018

  • 11 Jan 2018Second storey added to Rajeshwori SchoolRajeshwori School
  • 23 Aug 2018Rajeshwori School reaches its final stageRajeshwori School

2019

  • 7 Apr 2019SSDRC chosen as the 2019 recipientSpecial Needs School
  • 27 Jul 2019Gala dinner in Salt Lake CitySpecial Needs School

2020

  • 3 Apr 2020Food deliveries during the Covid-19 lockdownRescue & Relief
  • 25 Jun 2020PCR laboratory for JhapaRescue & Relief

2021

  • 27 Mar 2021Further NRs 1 million released to SSDRCSpecial Needs School
  • 31 May 2021Oxygen for Nepal consortium goes publicOxygen for Nepal
  • 16 Jun 2021Government agrees to pay for the airliftOxygen for Nepal
  • 13 Jul 2021Change of government in NepalOxygen for Nepal
  • 11 Aug 2021Ministry of Finance agrees to fund the air cargoOxygen for Nepal
  • 19 Aug 2021Cabinet approves the airlift fundingOxygen for Nepal
  • 20 Sept 2021First air cargo tender fails on priceOxygen for Nepal
  • 20 Nov 2021Tender reissued and awardedOxygen for Nepal

2022

  • 12 Jan 2022Airlift cancelled five days before departureOxygen for Nepal
  • 24 Feb 2022Freight forwarder withdraws the quoted airlift priceOxygen for Nepal
  • 5 Mar 2022Force majeure claim rejectedOxygen for Nepal
  • 15 Mar 2022Consortium funds repackaging and authorises sea freightOxygen for Nepal
  • 21 Jul 2022Oxygen plants collected from the factory for sea freightOxygen for Nepal

2023

  • 27 Jan 2023First oxygen generators installed in Nepali hospitalsOxygen for Nepal
The full record, with sources

What the organisation has done

Volunteers stacking sacks of rice and packets of food outside a building, beneath a banner reading Mission Critical Nepal, Earthquake Relief 2015.
Completed2015

Rescue and Relief: Mission Critical Nepal

Sindhupalchowk and Dhading districts, Nepal

Mission Critical Nepal was the emergency operation that Mission Rebuild Nepal's founders ran in the weeks after the 25 April 2015 earthquake, four months before the organisation was formally constituted. Mobile medical camps in Sindhupalchowk treated 250 patients. Four village development committees in Sindhupalchowk and Dhading received a month of food reserves for 6,100 people. Fifteen hundred tents were distributed, and Sipapokhare was declared a no-hunger zone once every household in the VDC had been reached. The team was in Bhotang, on the Tibetan border, when the 12 May aftershock struck.

Read the project
A transition home under construction on a terraced hillside: a heavy timber frame carrying a corrugated zinc roof over dry-stone and mud walls, with maize growing behind it.
Completed2015-2017

Rebuilding Sipapokhare

Sipapokhare VDC, Sindhupalchowk, Nepal

Sipapokhare is a village development committee in southern Sindhupalchowk, about 40 miles north-east of Kathmandu. The 2015 earthquakes destroyed or critically damaged almost all of its 998 homes and killed around 100 of its 3,700 residents. Mission Rebuild Nepal set out to give every displaced household a transition home: a timber frame on a stone plinth, walls of local stone and mud, and a corrugated zinc roof, built by the families who would live in it. When the project closed in June 2017, a ward-by-ward physical count confirmed 800 houses delivered.

Read the project
The open rear of a shipping container holding four large crated oxygen plants, two of them stencilled Novair, on a loading apron in France.
Completed2021–2023

Nepal Oxygen Project

Hospitals across Nepal; equipment manufactured in France

Nepal's second Covid-19 wave in the spring of 2021 exposed how little medical oxygen the country could produce for itself. Mission Rebuild Nepal led a consortium of eight organisations that bought ten oxygen generators and five high-pressure cylinder filling systems from Novair S.A. in France, then spent close to two years moving them through government approvals, a failed air-freight tender and a forced switch to sea cargo. The first installations were reported in January 2023.

Read the project
Five students in Mission Rebuild Nepal t-shirts standing with two adults under a painted SSDRC welcome banner at the school entrance.
Completed2019–2021

Special Needs School

Old Sinamangal (Pepsicola), Kathmandu-32

The Special School for Disabled and Rehabilitation Center takes children with autism and other disabilities, charges no school fees, and had 45 pupils against a waiting list of 400 when Mission Rebuild Nepal chose it as its 2019 cause. MRN set out to fund nine classrooms, a toilet block and a canteen, at a target of $60,000, releasing money in instalments against proof of completed work. Two transfers totalling NPR 2,047,372 are documented in the school's building fund receipts, in February 2020 and April 2021.

Read the project
A finished two-storey school building painted yellow with a maroon plinth and roofline, with open verandas and steel balustrades on both floors.
Completed2017–2018

Rajeshwori School Construction

Sipapokhare, Sindhupalchowk

Having finished 800 houses at Sipapokhare in Sindhupalchowk, Mission Rebuild Nepal turned to the village school. It added a storey to Rajeshwori School through 2017, and published photographs of the finished two-storey block in August 2018. The surviving record of this project is thin, and this page says only what that record supports.

Read the project
All projects

What partners and volunteers say

“Rajdhani Mandir, located in Northern Virginia, acted promptly after the earthquake news and its congregation donated wholeheartedly, including Mandir organizing several earthquake victims relief fundraisers in Mandir and outside. Mandir was looking to pick an appropriate organization in Nepal, India and/or local to disburse the funds. Although without much history, Mandir reluctantly sponsored 30 houses through MRN. However, Mandir management became pleasantly surprised when MRN provided such detailed proof of how the funds were used, including the material cost up to a single nail or brick, names, records and pictures of the recipients of Mandir sponsored houses, and audit trails showing that MRN is truly a zero overhead NGO. Mandir decided to sponsor another enhanced design 12 houses with shade for the livestock. It has been a pleasure to work with and support such dedicated volunteers and their NGO, the MRN.”

Alok Srivastava, PhD

Secretary, Executive Board · Rajdhani Mandir

Rebuilding Sipapokhare

“I had the privilege of working with Mission Rebuild Nepal in September and October 2015. During that time, the residents of Sipapokhare welcomed me into their lives, not just to work side by side with them in rebuilding their homes, but to immerse myself in their community. The work that MRN is doing has been critical in rebuilding these communities and helping them to move forward from the damage of the past year. Though I joined MRN as a volunteer to lend a hand to the villagers, I left having received far more from them.”

Max Clark

Volunteer, New York

Rebuilding Sipapokhare

“I moved to Kathmandu from a rural village called Dolakha in the pursuit of a better life for myself. I was faced with great difficulties and challenges in my life despite being educated and perfectly capable of carrying out daily activities. When I saw an autistic child struggle for life on the street, I realized that my struggle was nothing compared to all the underprivileged children with special needs. That day, I made a promise to myself that I am going to do something about it. I don't have any children of my own but I feel like a mother, mother of such a big family. Their laughs, their cries, their hugs give me strength to fight against all odds. I will continue to be beside them no matter what difficulty I may face.”

Sabita Upreti

Founder · Special School for Disabled and Rehabilitation Center (SSDRC)

Special Needs School

Also in this section

Message from the President

Dr Madan Uprety on reaching Sindhupalchowk days after the earthquake, the volunteers who followed, and the 10,000 expert hours behind an unpaid, volunteer-run NGO.

Board, Nepal Team and Volunteers

The doctors, engineers and field staff behind Mission Rebuild Nepal in the United States and in Nepal, and the overseas volunteers who lived in Sipapokhare.