"People don't change their ideas, they die with them."
- Max Planck, father of Quantum Mechanics
Bibekshil Nepali can not change the ways of the Nepali Congress, the CPN UML, or the CPN Maoist. But it can replace them.
BibekSheel Nepali: Earthquake Response Task Force
नेपालमा एउटा अहिंसात्मक कोतपर्व को खाँचो
Missing Leadership by Ujwal Thapa
- Max Planck, father of Quantum Mechanics
Bibekshil Nepali can not change the ways of the Nepali Congress, the CPN UML, or the CPN Maoist. But it can replace them.
BibekSheel Nepali: Earthquake Response Task Force
नेपालमा एउटा अहिंसात्मक कोतपर्व को खाँचो
Missing Leadership by Ujwal Thapa
we rushed to Teaching Hospital less than 30 minutes after the massive quake at 11:56 am. Everyone and everything seemed to be in utter chaos. ...... During a calamity of this magnitude, BibekSheel Nepali party had built a clear protocol. It states that the first thing any BibekSheel Nepali party member is expected to do after checking upon their families is to go to the nearest hospital and help the authorities there manage the chaos. We did what we had been taught to do. We immediately set up a help desk to handle the rush of thousands of injured and panicked citizens. ....... We started helping the doctors and nurses ferry the ones still fighting for their lives and the dead. There was an immediate shortage of emergency medicines so right there and then, we started raising money.
Every Nepali we asked gave!
None held back. With the nearly Rs 100,000 raised, we opened up closed medical shops, bought the medicines which the medical practitioners immediately used to save lives. The hospital garden soon became a big 'open sky' hospital. ......... At a time of a disaster of this magnitude, the job of any leadership is to build a positive network connecting those who want to save lives to those who needed help.While the political leadership proved utterly incapable of arranging this, Nepali citizens opened their hearts.
They were desperate to help in any way they could. So realizing this gap in governance, we started connecting with them to give all these noble hearts better chances of saving Nepali lives immediately. ......... In the last two weeks, we connected thousands of wonderful kind-hearted, ordinary men and women from around the world together to bring relief to millions of Nepalis. We ourselves managed to send immediate help to 300+ areas in 17 districts. ......... Leadership is all about managing and creating hope for those around you, even when you yourself are in shock. As Nepalis reached out on social media assuring millions of Nepalis inside and outside the country that they were safe and working together to save Nepali lives, this created a virtuous cycle of hope. And along with thousands of independent efforts, this cycle of hope has perhaps created the single largest outpouring of love and empathy from the world ever for Nepal! ........ We started a 24-hour hotline even though we only had a mobile phone number and no landline and internet. We must have responded to thousands of immediate help requests over Facebook alone. Hundreds poured in to get help from our physical help desks that we opened in Teaching Hospital, Bir Hospital and Bhaktapur Hospital! ....... When citizens needed paal (tarpaulins) we rushed to Dhangadhi in the far west to bring back three tons in a truck. When another group requested urgent help to bring shelter to the Chepang villages in Makwanpur, we dropped some of the paal on the way. ....... When residents of Tsum valley chartered a helicopter, we helped them with tarps and rice sacks. It's not always that we took the initiative; it's mostly been Nepali citizens themselves. We just enabled them to their highest potential. When citizens of Sindhupalchowk came with their painfully collected relief materials, we arranged our volunteers to provide them security and transportation. When doctors and nurses came to help, we gave them information and medicines to support in their own life saving missions. ....A government that doesn't go local doesn't function. When people simply do not trust their elected government with their donations, it concerns us greatly. We felt the acute need of elected local governance in every level of our rescue and relief missions in the 17 districts we made it to; there was a chronic absence of local authority!
.......... Leadership trusts and opens its arms and lets go of suspicions at times of calamities. We were full of doubt when people we had never heard of offered help. But we came to a decision to eventually accept the help of anyone who wanted to help save Nepali lives because in the end, that is all that matters. We got the help of Bangladeshi doctors to European volunteers to Buddhist monks to American disaster fighters. We learnt a painful lesson: Opening our heart is more important than doubting intentions when humanity seeks to share our pains. In the end, leadership is about saving lives.
