Dear Friends,

As we are all familiar and challenged to win this pandemic of COVID-19, I know it’s really hard to see and listen everyday world news about the deaths and infections worldwide.

Nepal is also suffering from this pandemic and we are in lock down from 24th of March 2020. Nepal being a small country and surrounded by two big countries, China and India. China the source of this virus and India with open borders, we saw lots of chance of spreading this virus in the country. And if it spreads what will happen?? A big questions to everyone’s mind, Very strongly hit. Nepal again with list medical equipment, with less medical manpower, with less ideas, and list management skills and with difficult geographical region is always a question how badly the virus could spread into the country. So government decided Lockdown as a best option to prevent from this pandemic.

Most of the Nepali, they don’t have their saving. They mostly work in the afternoon and run their kitchen. So it was a big hit for them. The capita income is very less in the country and very limited people have their savings. Especially the people living in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal where more than 8 million people live, with the hope of getting good medical services, getting more jobs, study higher education and many other dreams. We always say that Kathmandu is the city of dream and opportunity.

Nepal having a series of challenges, civil war which ran for 10 years and 10000 people died and ended in 2008,  devastating Earthquake in 2015 April with 7.8 magnitude. Lots of houses got collapsed and more than 10,000 people died. But people they didn’t lose hope and stayed strong. In a result everything is coming up very nicely.

But this small and unseen thing is really taking the smile from the people. During the earthquake people stayed more than a month out of the houses and walked with smile in their faces. But now everyone is locked in the house and sad.

But we can defiantly overcome this situation, with much more things. Everything has its own balance, in Nepal there is a big gap between rich and the poor, so in this crisis and in this difficult situation the most important thing is to support each other in however way we can. This is the right time to think about yourself, your family and your community. Which we are doing now.

Nepal’s more than 70% of people main occupation, Agriculture. But import more than 40 % of the food from India and China. Most of the Young people are going to the Middle East to earn for their family. Working in 40-45 degree centigrade.  The government recently announced that the country will go through the starvation and planning to overcome this. People working in Kathmandu on a daily wages are walking more than 1000 km to go to their homes, they all have at least small land for which the country can be self-sustainable in terms of food. The people who were running for the money are now running for the source of living, Which is food.  I am so happy to see the villagers working on roof top gardening, recycling the water container and planting the different vegetables.

Mitra as a community based organization, we would like to help and support all the needy people living in the areas and specially those who lost their jobs and have difficult in living. Let’s join hand together and overcome this pandemic soon. Lets share the light of hope, positivity and courage to overcome this difficult situation.

We really appreciate your any kind of support.

Thank you so much.

 Stay safe and healthy.

 Santosh Chhetri

 mitragroup69@gmail.com