I'm Bina Shrestha and I'm a social entrepreneur
working in Nepal, and my husband is also a social entrepreneur.
So our passion is to work to change the world
and make a difference together.
In 2015, when the earthquake hit Nepal,
we went out to the earthquake hit areas two days after the earthquake.
The people were just outside, sitting on the roads
on the field and their houses were all
destroyed.
The people were completely in shock, in hunger and totally helpless.
And that is a very strong
scene.
I remember from that visit that made us feel,
both me and my husband, like we had to do something about this.
Just giving relief materials is not enough,
It has to go beyond that.
Nepal had lost 600,000 houses.
That was the number of houses that needed to be built.
So we were looking for a technology that would help
all the people who had lost these houses, rebuild their homes,
and that had to be cheap enough and simple enough.
And we found the interlocking brick technology,
the best technology for our country,
because we could build with local materials, which was soil
and sand and little bit of cement that was available in the ground.
It was cheap enough because we could train the locals to build their own houses
and it was also disaster resistant.
So it had all the qualities that we are looking for.
We don't just sell machines, we sell the whole package of training
and helping them to set up and establish their business take off.
Our engineers and a whole training
team goes there and stays with them for 12 days
to get the first production started.
In the last 7 years,
we have built 6,000 houses
through our micro-entrepreneurs.
More than 500 people leave Nepal every day, which is a huge number.
That is something that has been ingrained in the Nepalese society
that you have to go abroad to earn good money or status for that matter.
Right now we need skills, we need skilled people.
So I think it is important for the youngsters, especially to understand
the value of living in your own country and fulfilling your dreams.
You can do it here as well.
We receive unrestricted funding from the Australian Government
and this funding is to create
250 new enterprises
all over Nepal,
Build Up Nepal is co-funding and matching the same amount.
And it is for helping people with low income to have their own way
of sustainable income without going
abroad.
This is also the grant that will be really good for COVID recovery.
During COVID people not just lost lives,
that was major,
but also people lost a lot of income because we had two major lockdowns
and the local homegrown businesses were shut down.
It was very tough for a Build Up
to keep on working because COVID was spread everywhere.
There was restrictions, even if not lockdowns,
everything was restricted and we couldn't move and move about in the field.
And during that time, we used our time
to help the existing entrepreneurs, support them.
We sponsored their ads in Facebook so
so that they would start getting calls, inquiries for bricks,
and that would give them a push to start their business again.
We want to have environmentally, disaster resistant, cheaper bricks
available in Nepal that everyone's dream of building a house comes true,
and still it doesn't break when there's a natural disaster.
What if all new construction was from these bricks, right!
It would solve a lot of problems
from environment problems or economic problems.
And also it would help a lot of micro-entrepreneurs to
create more
economic activities.