Earthquake resilience in Nepal: Impact enhancement through inter-community learning and a TV documentary

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This application is to support work to enhance the impact of our previous project, 'Resilience Policymaking in Nepal: Giving Voice to Communities' (Grant Ref: ES/R000514/1). This proposal involves all of the investigators from the original project (both UK and Nepal-based), and adds new collaborators and communities in Nepal with whom we hope to broaden the impact of our findings through inter-community dialogues between villages that were and were not affected by the earthquakes of 2015, policy workshops, and a professionally produced television documentary to be broadcast free-to-air, nationwide.The original project focussed on communities in two Districts (Gorkha and Sindhupalchok) that had been severely affected by the earthquakes of 2015. A range of findings from these communities covered the entire disaster cycle, from preparedness activities through to relief and reconstruction. In particular, a range of issues around the government's attempts to build resilience through the reconstruction process were identified, as well as community-level actions that had either contributed to, or been an obstacle to, post-disaster recovery.One of the most striking findings of the project was that resilience-building efforts were almost entirely focussed on those areas that had been severely affected in 2015. Other parts of the country - including districts such as Mugu in the Far West - have received very limited support for improving their ability to cope with future natural disasters. This is particularly problematic because many communities in Mugu are in fact more vulnerable (and generally poorer) than those who were affected in 2015. There is also anecdotal evidence (not least from PHASE Nepal, our NGO partner, which has a permanent presence in Mugu) that awareness about disaster risks in these remote communities is currently extremely low.In this follow-on project, we propose to begin to address this issue by promoting inter-community learning between villagers from Gorkha and Sindhupalchok who participated in the original project, and communities in Mugu District which do not have recent experience of major earthquakes. Utilising similar participatory methodologies to those employed in the original project, we will seek to broaden and deepen its impact through a series of methods including participatory videomaking, inter-community dialogues, policy/stakeholder workshops, and the creation of a professionally-produced 30 minute documentary to be screened on Nepal TV.