A new school in Nepal - GBH Austria supports the children of migrant workers-victims in construction

22 March 2018 13:18

 

On 9th of April 2018 will be the opening of the new school in Shankar, Tandrang region in Nepal. The BWI affiliate, GBH, Austria is not only active in improving working conditions in Qatar, but also launched a fundraising campaign in 2016 in Austria in cooperation with the Austrian Trade Union Confederation and the Naturfreunde Niederösterreich Organisation collecting funds to build a school with kindergartens for the children of migrant workers in Nepal. In addition, Nepal was seriously hit by 2 earthquakes in the spring of 2015. There were about 8,800 deaths and 22,300 injured.

The building of the school shall benefit the children of the fatally injured Nepalese migrant workers. Family fathers from Nepal died on construction sites for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar and the GBH initiated this campaign to create and build the most important infrastructure in Nepal. Above all, the children of the numerous fatally injured workers will have a chance to education and thus get a future perspective. Josef Muchitsch, president of GBH, Austria highlights: "We want to help 800 Children from 11 schools with 50 classrooms and 10 kindergartens in Nepal, which will be built together with different partners. Thanks to our fundraising campaign, another school and a kindergarten can now be built. We want to give children a chance to better education and thus a chance for their future.”

The BWI and the Austrian GBH have been working together for years to ensure better working conditions on construction sites for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Especially migrant workers from Nepal were often victims of accidents at work.

In 2016, the International Worker's Memorial Day on April 28, was the starting point for the fundraising campaign. In this process, the GBH have called their members to participate and 50,000 Euros were collected which have been invested in planned infrastructure measures in Nepal. The building of the school and kindergarten began in October 2017 and will be finished in April 2018. As Naturfreunde Niederösterreich Organisation are already involved with the "Children of the Mountain" project in Nepal, they have also been tasked with the coordination and implementation of this project on site.

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