For their Industry Engagement project, Lauren Holmes and Rebecca Kerr traveled to Nepal in late December with Aussie Action Abroad. During the trip they visited UNCHR’s Kathmandu office, where they met with UNHCR’s representative for Nepal Carolin Spannuth Verma, and the Beldanghi Refugee Camp, which houses refugees from Bhutan. The group’s leader David Anderson, a MoDDD graduate who has worked as a site planner for UNHCR and RedR in Nepal, also ran a site-planning workshop based on Beldangi as a case study. This was followed by a visit to the village of Bhubule where they helped a construction team and local tradespeople to rebuild a path to a kindergarten, where monsoonal rain had caused land slips and erosion. The group also joined a team of architects and locals completing the building of a women’s centre in the small village of Sera using locally sourced materials and building techniques.
Below is Lauren and Rebecca’s report from their trip.
