BALTIMORE—Lutheran World Relief is assisting families affected by devastating floods in Nepal and India with more than $100,000 in immediate aid.
Heavy rains since Aug. 11 have swept through southern Nepal and the northern Bihar state in India, prompting floods and landslides that have killed an estimated 250, with dozens more still missing. The disaster has submerged crops in Nepal’s fertile southern rim, threatening food security of hundreds of thousands of people.
The extent of the damage and its impact is unknown as many villages remain inaccessible due to washed-out roads and bridges.
More rain was forecast in the coming days.
Already active with award-winning development projects in both regions long before the recent rains, LWR is focusing its emergency efforts on short-term food rations for families.
In Nepal, LWR is providing food to an initial 1,650 families in the Bardiya and Narawparasi districts, two of three districts where it has been working with local partners and rural residents.
LWR’s emergency assistance in India’s Bihar region, where the international NGO works in partnership with several large congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), is scaling up. News reports say more than 6 million people in the state have been affected.
Recently, LWR and its partners won a $1 million grant for the expansion of its Trans-Boundary Flood Resilience Project helping communities on the India-Nepal border cope with precisely the kind of persistent and destructive flooding they are now. Called the Water Window Challenge, the global competition initiated by the Z Zurich Foundation and the Global Resilience Partnership sought innovative solutions by multi-disciplinary teams to increase the resilience of flood-prone communities in South Asia and other parts of the world.