Samantha Menard
Senior Reporter
On Aug. 26, a series of flash floods impacted areas around the Nepal-Tibet border, resulting in mass destruction, entire communities being cut off and an actively rising death toll. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), those affected now lack access to safe water, food, healthcare, schools, essential services and other basic necessities.
Former Keene State professor Renate Gebauer, an ecologist who taught environmental studies at the college for over 20 years, has started a GoFundMe for Timure, one of the communities affected by the floods.
“There is a component [to the donations] which is very important. There is a psychological component that they [the people in Timure] are not left alone, that other people are thinking about them, and that really helps. When people are reaching out, that makes a big difference for them to endure the pain and difficulties,” she said.
Gebauer said the GoFundMe will serve as a way to help people in Timure “survive and start their lives again.” She said there were many young people who now have no family, but would need sponsorship in place of previous financial assistance from their parents. Additionally, donations would go towards funeral expenses for the lives lost.
In regard to her place in the Timure community, she said, “Many of the kids [in the villages] played with me, I would go to weddings… and now they’re all gone. The consequences are slowly unfolding, and there’s communities who lost their entire families. They lost everything.”
Gebauer said she started the fundraiser “right away” because she was afraid of losing the possibility of spontaneous donations, but said her problem at the moment is that she’s unsure of how many survived. She also said that the floods occurred as a result of climate change, specifically global warming.
She said, “We as Americans and Westerners are responsible for this. Nepal spends so little energy, most things are hydropowered, and they contributed the least to it. Now, they must deal with the consequence of people’s negligence. This is how we’re all connected.”
She added, “It’s not about guilt, but about taking responsibility. How do we contribute to the global moment?”
Gebauer’s daughter-in-law is from Timure, and Gebauer has visited Nepal about 18 times. She shared that she created a GoFundMe for the Timure community in 2015, after a massive earthquake hit the area.
Prior to her retirement, Gebauer would take students to Nepal for their honors trip. She said that after her first visit to the country, she “fell in love” with the community, and decided that “every Western kid” needed to experience what it was like there.
“I got a grant and prepared the trips for my students. I made the connections, I would think of what to do, and with the honors programs, we went 4 times,” she said. “In between, I brought students to do internships in sustainable communities.”
Her other ties to the country include her adoptive son, whom she met on one of her first trips, as well as her grandchildren. Gebauer said she was intending to visit the country again in December, but due to the severity of the situation, she is unsure if she will be able to go.
Despite this, she said she wanted to continue her work of encouraging people to visit Nepal’s other areas, as the country is dependent on tourism. She also said that any amount of contribution to the cause, and her fundraising efforts, is important, because it comes as a result of people “opening their hearts.”
Gebauer described the communities in Nepal as “strong and resilient.” She said, “The pain and trauma will last, but I’m hopeful for their path forward.”
Those interested in supporting Timure can find Gebauer’s fundraiser, as well as additional ones for other affected areas, on GoFundMe under “Support Timure after Nepal flood.”
.
Samantha Menard can be contacted at
smenard@kscequinox.com
