Charity feeding 1,000 people a day after Nepal floods
A Coventry charity says it is now feeding more than 1,000 families a day after the floods in Nepal.
**Charity feeding 1,000 people a day after Nepal floods**
A charity says it is struggling to reach starving families in Nepal, a week after devastating floods destroyed thousands of homes and killed more than 1,300 people.
Feed the Hungry has 25 volunteers on the ground, delivering rice and flour to villages that were cut off by the floods more than a week ago.
But it said there were thousands more people it has not been able to reach, with many roads impassable, meaning it is taking hours to get to places only a few kilometres away.
“After three days we went to a village and we met several people. They were saying that they were starving. Children were crying for the food”, said Pastor Ruben Rasaili, who is leading the team in Nepal.
Feed the Hungry's feeding centre in Nepal is now feeding 1,000 families a day.
Rasaili says he has been getting calls from people begging for help, with one man saying he wished he had died in the floods.
“I said 'why?', and the man replied 'because anyhow we are going to die, because nobody cares for us. We don't have food to eat. We are starving.'”
The charity was already working on the ground in Nepal but has now expanded its operations with a food kitchen feeding 1,000 people a day.
“We felt we have to have the feeding centre”, Rasaili continued, “because, nobody has the cooking utensils, so if we provide them emergency aid like rice, and food items, they don't have anything to cook with.”
“They don't have place to live, they don't have food to eat, they don't have any business, they don't have any clothes to wear. They don't have anything”.
Another 400 families who do have access to a kitchen are also being given food aid packs.
But getting that aid to the families has proved difficult after the floods washed away the roads.
One of the charity's trucks took 8 hours to travel 40 kilometres to deliver food.
“There's no access to roads, they have to [try to] make the road by themselves.” Rasaili said.
The pastor said the work in Nepal has also been hard on the volunteers.
“Still every day the helicopter goes, they are bringing the dead bodies, and they are bringing the injured people.
“News are silent, but the death rate is growing day by day”.
Feed the Hungry is based in Coventry and has been operating since 2005.
It continues to support families facing hunger in the Midlands, but now also provides disaster relief and feeds over 645,000 children around the world in 29 countries.