Disaster & Immediate Assistance: A Network Ready Before the Next Emergency
Ekjut's Disaster & Immediate Assistance project builds a network of responders, transport and resources so help reaches Nepal's emergencies faster.
Nepal lives with earthquakes, floods and landslides. When disaster strikes, the first hours and days matter most, and that is exactly when help is hardest to organise. Disaster & Immediate Assistance is the Ekjut project that prepares for those moments in advance.
What the project does
The project builds a volunteer and community network that can be activated around a genuine need, whether a disaster, an emergency or an urgent request from one family. The network brings together:
- Volunteers and local responders
- Professionals, including medical expertise
- Transport, logistics and essential resources
- Businesses, organisations and community connectors
When a need arises, Ekjut identifies it, verifies it, connects the right people, mobilises them and accounts for what was done. Relationships are kept alive afterwards so the network is ready for the next emergency.
Lessons that shaped it
The project draws on what Ekjut's founder, Chirag Goyal, learned through more than a decade of relief work with other organisations before Ekjut existed. Three lessons stand out.
Communities can multiply help. After the 2015 earthquake, with Helping Hands Nepal, volunteers in Dolakha built homes while teaching villagers how to build them. The villagers then built their own and taught their neighbours. A handful of volunteers could build a few houses. A community that knew how could rebuild a neighbourhood.
Willingness is rarely the problem; connection is. During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, food relief for daily-wage workers began on the second day. The hard part was finding a safe, practical way to move help while working within police restrictions.
Coordination and local knowledge are resources. During the 2024 floods, rescue support by raft in Kathmandu's Balkhu area showed that roads disappear, weather shifts and morning plans fail by afternoon. One person knows the community, another has transport, another has supplies. Together they move.
In each case, help came together through phone calls and personal contacts, assembled from scratch. This project exists so that the next response starts with the network already in place.
How you can help
- Live in a flood- or landslide-prone area? Join as a local contact. You know what is needed on the ground.
- Have a vehicle, a truck or a boat? Register under transport and logistics.
- Run a business? Supplies, storage and staff time all count.
- Simply willing to show up? That is where it starts.
Join the registry now, before the next disaster. If you are facing an emergency, submit a request and mark it "Emergency".