Mishru Chalise stands in front of a pair of goats as they quietly nibble at a bundle of green leaves suspended from a bamboo stake. "I've always liked goats," she says. The animals, both adult and kids, seem to share the affinity as they nuzzle against her and clamber over her mother, Shivakumari, sitting on the ground nearby.
But for the family - with eight children between Mishru and her sister - who live on a scrub-covered hilltop in Khavre, about 2 hours east of Kathmandu, keeping the livestock is not a matter of sentimentality. It's a vital plank for their economic survival. Classified as among the most vulnerable members of their community, they qualified for a NPR 40,000 (around 371 US Dollars) cash grant from the Nepal Red Cross Society, which they have used to buy four new animals and upgrade their goat shed.
This is located in an old temple building, where the family also lives because they have no property and no land to their names. Part of the process involves a three-day training on livestock care, like hanging the goat food so that the animals don't trample on it and how to spot common diseases among goats. Although the family have been raising goats for years, the knowledge was still useful for them.
Other households in the area, such as Shyam Bahadur Bhujel and his wife Savitri, have used the cash support to buy an additional cow and learned new methods on how to dig a drainage channel for the animals' waste in their cowshed.
Meanwhile, Sharmila Regmi has upgraded her tiny business from a snack stall under a tree to a little corrugated iron shop, which attracts a crowd of hungry school children as soon a classes are over.
The support these households have received is part of a wide-ranging Nepal Red Cross programme, which has been helping thousands of families improve their economic resilience all over the 14 districts worst affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 2015, that left nearly 9,000 people dead.
The quake and its aftershocks also destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, including the house of farmers Gun Ratna Mali and Gun Maya Mali in Bungamati, a village just a few kilometres from Kathmandu. Even the family's rice and vegetable seeds were buried. They were given seeds by the local government.
"But the seeds weren’t good at all. Some yields were very short, some taller - not consistent. Then the Red Cross gave us money and with that we bought new rice saplings and things have improved since then," Gun Maya Mali says.
“Human dignity is the crucial common thread in this work to promote better livelihoods and this in itself is part of an integrated approach which also prioritises health and hygiene, shelter and clean drinking water and sanitation after the earthquake,” says Umesh Dhakal, Nepal Red Cross Society's Head of Earthquake Response Operations.
One question is whether such support to survivors to make a better living might encourage some to stay in their villages, rather than seek to make a living in the big city or abroad, as millions of Nepalis currently have to do.
“Some families told us that if their livelihoods improve sufficiently in three or four years' time, they might be able to reconsider whether their menfolk would need to leave," says Anirudra Neupane, the Red Cross' District Coordinator in Kavre.
An important facet of livelihoods support is the provision of cash for work, helping communities both carry out projects which benefit them and at the same time earn a daily wage. In Okhaldunga District, a day's journey eastward from Kathmandu, villagers from Chuplu worked together with Red Cross support to dig a new path from their village, located at the bottom of a hill.
"Now people who are ill can be brought to the clinic much more easily and it's much more convenient for the children to get to school," says one villager in his sixties.
The villagers have been trying to boost their incomes even more by putting up plastic canopies to grow vegetables more effectively. "But we don’t have enough water to make proper use of them," he says. In keeping with its integrated approach, the Red Cross is currently conducting a feasibility study on what can be done to improve the water supply and allow the villagers further to improve their livelihoods.
*Among Nepal Red Cross Society's international partners supporting livelihoods programmes are the Consortium of Danish Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross and Finnish Red Cross (Kavre), British Red Cross (Kathmandu Valley) and the IFRC (Okhaldunga).
