On 26 August a glacier came down above the Lhende and took the valley with it. Eighteen schools destroyed, twenty more damaged, whole villages that can't be rebuilt where they stood. The Hundred is a hundred of us abroad, holding school places for the children who come out of this — one school year at a time, for as long as it takes them to finish.
Two hundred people have signed up, and sign-ups are still open. How many children we can carry, and for how long, depends on how many of us there are.
No money is being collected yet. We start when there's a partner on the ground and children are back in classrooms.
Tents, rice, blankets. They arrive in days, they're gone in months, and they matter enormously while they last.
But whether a family is okay in twenty years comes down to something duller: did the kids stay in school.
School is the first thing a household drops after losing a home. It's the hardest thing to pick back up.
The work now shifts to finding the right organisation to partner with.
We're talking to a few, but we haven't picked one yet. The focus on the ground has been rescue and relief, and gathering the right information on what's needed. That will likely hold next week too, so finalising a partner will probably take around two more weeks.
We're in active conversation with people who have networks on the ground and people who are on the frontlines. We're committing to children's education year after year, not once, so we'd rather take the time to do the diligence properly.
Nothing has been collected and nothing has been spent. Read the full note on where we stand →
Several villages no longer exist. There, schools have to be rebuilt before fees mean anything — a scale of work that needs government and international bodies leading it. That may not be where we can do the most good.
Some children were already at boarding schools near Kathmandu, which is why they survived. Their families are displaced and some lost entirely. The school is standing and they're enrolled, so the question is who pays next term.
People have offered contacts on the ground, from those building shelters for children to those putting up makeshift classrooms. We're organising a run of conversations to work out which are viable, and how quickly they could start.
Almost every single person has asked us the same question: how will they know the money is being spent the right way. We'll settle the details once we pick a partner. Four things we're committed to already.
Once a year, with children's names redacted.
What the money bought, and what it didn't.
Checking on the children's wellbeing in person.
Children can tell their own story, if they want to.
The villages can't be rebuilt overnight and families are being relocated right now. Nobody has a confirmed list yet. You're holding a place for whichever of these turns out to be the real thing.
You cover a school year before it starts. No monthly thing, nobody waiting on money halfway through a term. Then next year we ask you again, and you can say no. We're hoping you don't, for about ten years.
Once a year: report cards, places held, exams sat, a note from the headmaster, photos of the school. No sad-child photographs — if we can't make the case without that photo, we should make a better case.
A child in grade two now sits their school-leaving exams around 2036. That's the horizon.
You renew every year, so nothing's locked in. But that's the length of the thing I'm asking you to think about.
Each bar is the total you'll have given by the end of that school year, at the $100 level. The first year is likely Baisakh 2084 — April 2027.
Covering a child all the way through may cost more than $100 a year, in which case there are fewer children and more of us. We'll publish the real number once we have it.
Below. Thirty seconds, no money, no card. Your name and which level you'd cover — so we know how many places we can actually promise anyone.
We're looking for a registered Nepali organisation working on education in the affected districts, plus schools wherever the displaced families end up. That's the part we're working on now. Some of these children are already in school, which may mean this starts sooner than anticipated. We'll keep you posted.
School fees paid directly, and we're also looking at what we can cover beyond fees — uniform, shoes, books, exam fees. Receipts for all of it.
If your circumstances change, just say so. Places are funded together, so someone stepping back means I go find a replacement. Nobody loses their seat.
| $100 | Fees and the costs the school bills directly. |
| $200 | Fees, plus everything around it. Uniform, shoes, books, exam fees — the quiet costs that push children out even when tuition is covered. Bought and handed over as items, with receipts, rather than sent as cash. |
| More | More than one place Plenty of people will want to hold two or three. Some families are splitting one between them. |
These are working estimates and they may well be wrong. Community schools in Nepal are free at basic level, so what actually pushes a child out is uniforms, books, exam fees and the trip there. And right now the bigger problem is that the buildings are gone. Real numbers, from a real partner, go up here before anyone sends anything.
Rasuwa rebuilt itself after 2015. It'll do it again, with or without a hundred people on the internet.
Holding a place covers one cost, narrowly, at a moment when narrow things go far. Everyone in that valley has come through more with less than I ever have. There's at least as much to learn from them as there is to offer.
Families lead. Sponsorship covers schooling. How a home is run, what it needs and what comes next stays with the people living it.
Children decide what's shared. Beyond report cards, nothing about a child goes out without asking them first.
I've been abroad long enough that I now find out about my own country's disasters from a phone in a different time zone.
Nepal has had a hard run. The earthquake in 2015, floods most monsoons, and now a glacier that came down a valley in a matter of minutes. Every time, I've done something — a fundraiser, a drive, money sent to people I trust. Most of it helped for a few weeks, and then the news cycle moved and so did I.
This time I wanted something with a longer tail. A hundred of us each holding one place is the most tangible version of impact I could come up with.
The people doing the actual work — rescue teams, teachers, ward officials, the neighbours who got there first — are carrying the hard part. I'm working out how to be useful from four thousand miles away, which is a much smaller job.
This is a list, not a checkout. We'll come back to you once there's a local partner, somewhere for the money to go, and a way to move it that stands up to scrutiny. Realistically, spring.
If it doesn't come together, we'll tell you that too.
Teachers, headmasters, ward officials, people running relief in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading or Gorkha, and anyone from the affected wards. Also anyone who wants to help us build this — operations, comms, or time on the ground. Nepali or English, whichever is easier.
Or email directly: hello@thehundrednepal.org