Recent Fieldwork in Nepal

CENDEP’s Sue Webb travelled to Nepal for three weeks in January 2024 to conduct qualitative research for the ongoing humanitarian shelter evaluation project funded by USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance.

CENDEP is working with CARE International UK’s Global Shelter Team on this project which started in October 2022 and ends in June this year. Sue travelled with Bill Flinn and Janina Engler-Williams to four areas which were badly affected by the 2015 earthquake: Gorkha, Nuwakot, Dhading and Sindhulpalchok. In each area the team visited villages and learnt people’s recovery stories through household interviews and group discussions. We were hosted in Nepal by CARE Nepal and had a huge amount of help from INGOs who had implemented humanitarian shelter programming in the aftermath of the earthquake.

The research aims to understand if and how that early humanitarian assistance helped people to recover their homes. The Government of Nepal implemented a huge ‘owner-driven’ reconstruction programme in the wake of the earthquake, although most people experienced a gap between the emergency assistance they received and having the resources to be able to rebuild. Clearly, making connections between humanitarian programming and its impacts and outcomes several years later is challenging. Ideally, the research findings will provide some insights into what shelter support is useful as people navigate their recovery pathways. One of the CENDEP Master’s modules, Shelter after Disaster, is taught by Bill Flinn and Charles Parrack, who is also involved with the same research (focused on Afghanistan in Charles’ case). No doubt the research findings will also find their way into next year’s Master’s class materials.