The Journey: From Disaster to Preparedness

Join six women from Udayapur as they visit the epicentre of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, learning from the experience of women there and sharing how they prepare their families and communities for disaster.

Women in rural areas of the Hindu Kush Himalaya play a key role in household disaster preparedness. However, they do not always have the same access to information and opportunities to extension services and government programs as men. This is especially true in places like Udayapur district in Nepal, where there are high levels of male outmigration.

As part of action research by the Himalica initiative of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Nepal Institute of Development Studies (NIDS), over 200 women from migrant-sending households had participated in training and village-level extension services on financial literacy, flood preparedness, and livelihoods diversification. This action research supplemented traditional knowledge of female participants from migrant-sending households with tailored inputs from a wide array of experts.