Spirit of Christmas: Neill Johanson, Ben Nemeny, Tom Singleton
The 2015 earthquake that struck Nepal left over 8,000 dead, 16,000 injured, and impacted the lives of 5.6 million. It's estimated almost 7,000 schools were destroyed or significantly damaged by the quake that affected roughly 1.5 million children.
Neill Johanson started 'Climbing for Education', which was done in partnership with the Australian Himalayan Foundation both in Sydney and Kathmandu, and is a major school rebuild program where funds are being used to buy uniforms and help educate the children of Nepal, working in conjunction with their school reconstruction program.
Their role has included delivering supplies to the school children of Garma, helping with the construction of earthquake resilient classrooms, investigating new construction techniques that can be adopted by the locals that will significantly improve the learning environment for the children, as well as training the locals so they can carry on the work and help other schools that need to be rebuilt.
After 18 months, construction is underway for one of the largest and most remote schools in Nepal. It's attended by over 300 students, some of whom have special needs.
