Rebuilding Nepal, brick by brick
Meet Bina Shrestha, a social entrepreneur, wife, and mother in Nepal who co-founded an engineering company to build affordable, disaster-proof homes in the wake of the 2015 earthquake.
Bina was running a successful cleaning company when the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit, killing over 8.800 people and destroying 800,000 homes across the country. Bina joined the humanitarian response with her husband and son, quickly realising the full scale of impact. Without homes to live in, dropout rates from schools increased, disease spread around temporary housing and women and girls were pushed further into poverty as Nepali men were forced to migrate for work. “It was heart-wrenching to see women and children sitting outside their houses that were razed to the ground.”
Focused on the core problem of housing, Bina set out to find a solution. Within a year, she had set up Build up Nepal, a non-profit to create safe, affordable, and sustainable housing and empower local communities to project manage their recovery efforts. Unable to get traditional construction equipment into the small remote villages, Bina researched an ‘interlocking brick solution’ that used a small compression machine to create eco-friendly bricks sourced from local materials.
The technology was a gamechanger. Easy to transport and easy to use, rural communities purchased machines through a payment plan and created micro-construction companies that gave people homes to live in and new employment opportunities and financial stability. The initiative also disrupted Nepal’s dirty fired-brick industry, notorious for child labour and responsible for 2.7% carbon emissions worldwide.
Today, Build Up Nepal has supported 300 entrepreneurs to build 6,000 houses, providing equipment, training, and maintenance to local communities. It has created over 2,900 local jobs and empowered Nepali women to overcome gender barriers to become successful brick-makers, masons, and micro-entrepreneurs.
I believe with determination and genuine effort anything can be achieved; ‘success’ is another name for consistent hard work and the drive to make a difference.
