Sudbury teen Ayugma Acharya fundraising to help Nepal quake survivors
A teenager in Sudbury wants to help the country of his birth in the terrible aftermath of an earthquake last weekend.
Ayugma Acharya left Nepal with his family when he was in Grade 3. Now, a student at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School in Sudbury, Acharya said he was shocked to see the disaster unfolding.
"It's terrible, it's terrible," he said.
Updated reports from officials in Nepal on Tuesday said the death toll topped 5,000 people and was expected to climb. Acharya said news of the devastation hit him hard.
"I expected it in the sense that geologists did predict it around the end of 2013 that this will happen, but I never expected it to be this big and this soon."
Acharya said he still has relatives living in Nepal, and his mother has had a hard time reaching people on her side of the family in the country's hard-hit capital, Kathmandu.
He said some of his family managed to get word out about their condition on Facebook, and he said looking at the pictures they posted, the situation looked grim.
"When this tragedy first struck ... they slept on the cold hard grounds of the roads," said Acharya. "The only thing covering them from the wind and the rain was a thin bedsheet." He said people have been told not to go back into buildings until the aftershocks stop.
Acharya has started an online fundraising campaign to raise money for victims of the crisis, and he said he plans to go door-to-door collecting funds as well.
"I've been told by lots of people that maybe I should just leave the donations to the larger organizations," he said. "But I think as a Nepalese, I'd feel a greater sense of achievement if I did something on my own."
'Lots of little earthquakes are coming'
Limbu owns and operates Nepal Handicrafts in the Rainbow Centre mall in downtown Sudbury. His wife and daughters still live in Nepal, and it took more than eleven hours to find out if they were alive.
"[My wife] lives in a remote place," he said. "She told me all the communication things were all not working."
"I just talked to her ... and she says still lots of little earthquakes are coming and they are staying outside the house."
Limbu said he's deeply relieved that his two daughters in Kathmandu are also safe, and no one he knows was hurt or killed.
"I'm praying for good for Nepal, and quake recovery," he said. "And hopefully everyone will stand up on their own feet soon."