Over £3000 has been raised at a charity event in Leicester for the victims of the Nepal earthquake.
Nepalese restaurant, Everest Dine on Belgrave Gate organised the event to raise funds and awareness to support those who are suffering from the aftermath of the earthquake which happened on the 25 April.
The devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and surrounding areas killing over 8000 people and leaving thousands more injured and homeless. Many of the countries population are in urgent need of food, drinking water, shelter and medical supplies.
The earthquake was followed by a large number of aftershocks, including one that measured 7.3 on 12th of May.
The candle lighting ceremony and fundraising event in Leicester was an initiative set up by the Everest Group to help raise much needed funds for the people of Nepal. The evening was attended by Councillor Manjula Sood and various supportive guests and included an auction, selling of raffle tickets and canapés and food served throughout the evening.
Jeeb Pandey, General Manager at Everest Dine in Leicester spoke to Pukaar News about his personal connection, “I am from Nepal, my family lives in the Chitwan district. Yesterday I spoke to my father in Chintwan and he said they’re getting used to the aftershocks now, so they sleep on the ground floor, night time especially a problem when you sleep, so what they’re doing is leaving he main door, entrance open at night time while they are sleeping, so as soon as they feel they can quickly run out before they lose the time, so that’s the fear that they have at the moment.”
“What we’re doing is we’re trying to raise the funds for the earthquake victims back home in Nepal and we’ve got six branches all over the country, which are doing one day each, every branch is. We’ve already done two in Kent, one in London, one in Scotland, so we are here today (Monday)in Leicester, tomorrow we will be doing at Kettering, Northampton and then we will be completing the first round of the charity works,” shares Mr Pandey.
Speaking about the trauma and pain experience by thousands in Nepal he explained, “Lot of the village has been completely flattened there, no human life left there, most of them, even if you left, they’ve already left that village now and some of them whoever trapped they cannot be rescued, because of the continuous landslide, so people cannot get there, so it’s very, very difficult. Nepal itself was the poor country before as well, but because of this earthquake, now its pushed back to another 10-15 years, so that’s really, really difficult to take it down.”
“We hope to raise accumulated throughout all branches £30,000. We’ve already raised about £24,000, so we should be able to reach that target between these two branches to go,” expressed Mr Pandey.
All proceeds are set to go to the Nepalese Disaster NRN Fund through the Nepalese Embassy in London.
