Chandra Bahadur Rai Danuwar is more than happy to find shelter in a transitional house built by Nepal's first billionaire in Mahadevsthan, a small village near Kathmandu, after the devastating earthquake last year destroyed his home.
"They call it a transitional shelter. But it is more than a home for us," Chandra said.
He was one of almost a million Nepalese who lost their homes in the massive 7.9-magnitude earthquake of April 25, 2015 that killed nearly 9,000 people.
"We were taking shelter under a tree when the Chaudhary Foundation team reached here. It was two days after the earthquake. It was all fallen houses here. The place you see these shelters, was all rubble," he said, pointing to his right where 5-6 houses of the same style and design, with steep roofs of zinc sheets were erected.
"It was a familiar image of shelters that we had seen somewhere on the Internet. This used to be our beautiful village. It must have been the God's fury that took away our houses," he added.
Chandra said he was overwhelmed when the country's first-ever billionaire Binod Chaudhary, the Indian-origin chairman of the Chaudhary Foundation, reached there in September to formally hand over the shelters to the locals.
The foundation has built 118 shelters in Mahadevsthan village, 60 kilometres east of Kathmandu. The shelters were completed in a few weeks time, and the villagers started using them immediately.
The foundation has completed building a total of 2,540 transitional shelters and 37 schools. All these are located in the districts most affected by the quake.
The foundation has handed over 571 transitional homes and 7 school buildings to survivors commemorating the first anniversary of the quake.
In May last year, Chaudhary, whose ancestors migrated to Nepal from India some two centuries ago, had announced to build 10,000 transitional shelters (1,000 through own resources and 9,000 through donor partnership) and 100 school buildings for quake-hit people in 14 districts.
The shelters constructed by the foundation are known as transitional shelters as they are temporary structures meant to last approximately two years.
"That would give time for the village people to gather resources to build a more permanent structure. But going by the village standards, these could be pretty good houses to last as long as they last. The entire village that had taken shelter under tents and tarpaulins under trees, was able to move back to their own homes," Chandra said.
The transitional shelters are part of CG Shelter project led by the Chaudhary Foundation. The technical partner for the project is India-based SEEDS and compliance consultant is the global financial consulting firm PwC.
Organisations like the Alibaba Group, Tata Trust, LG, MoneyGram, and Surat Manav Sewa Sangh have funded the shelter and school projects.
