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 a hundred 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.
No money is being collected yet. The schools in Rasuwa are sheltering displaced families and won't reopen soon. We start when 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 mostly comes down to something duller: did the kids stay in school through the worst of it.
School is the first thing a household drops after losing a home. It's the hardest thing to pick back up.
The villages can't be rebuilt overnight and families are being relocated right now. I'm working with people on the ground to find out where they're actually landing. You're holding a place for when we know which school that turns out to be.
You cover a school year before it starts. No monthly thing, nobody waiting on money halfway through a term.
Then next year I ask you again. You can say no.
I'm hoping you don't, for about ten years.
Twice a year: report cards, how many places were held, how many kids sat their exams, what the money bought, a note from the headmaster. Photos of the school and the classrooms.
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.
Below. Thirty seconds, no money, no card. Your name and which level you'd cover — so I know how many places I can actually promise anyone.
I'm 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 I'm working on now.
Paid directly, never handed over in cash. At the $200 level, additional funds cover what a kid actually needs — 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 | One place, for one school year Fees and the costs the school bills directly. |
| $200 | A place, 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. I'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, I'll tell you that too.
Teachers, headmasters, ward officials, people running relief in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading or Gorkha, anyone from the affected wards, and anyone who has done this well before and can tell me where I'm about to get it wrong. Nepali or English, whichever is easier.
Or email directly: hello@thehundrednepal.org