A school for deaf children was one of the CAN projects hit by the earthquakes. Image: CAN

A charity founded by Britain’s first Everest summiteer is marking the first anniversary of the Nepal earthquakes with the release of a video and report.

Many of Community Action Nepal’s projects were destroyed in April last year.

The charity, established by mountaineer Doug Scott, works in the Himalayan country to provide educational and medical facilities for its inhabitants in remote mountain communities.

CAN said: “The Nepal earthquake damaged or destroyed around 40 projects CAN supports, mainly rural health posts, schools and porter rescue shelters.

“In the aftermath of the disaster, Doug Scott, CAN’s operations’ director, his small team of UK staff and supporters from across the UK and abroad immediately sprang into action, redoubling their efforts to fund raise to support emergency relief and reconstruction.

“CAN vowed to ‘Build Back Better’, by incorporating earthquake resistant features in the re-construction of its projects.”

CAN was founded by mountaineer Doug Scott

It said a comprehensive reference and progress report, One Year On, is being published to coincide with the first anniversary of the disaster in Nepal. “This sets out the challenges mountain communities face post-earthquake and how Community Action Nepal is supporting the rebuilding of communities, supporting rehabilitation of damaged lives and strengthening livelihoods,” it said.

“A year on the Nepal Earthquake has been largely been forgotten in public consciousness and superseded by other news and world events.”

Former BBC World Affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge, his wife Ruth and Nepalese cinematographer Narendra Mainali, have recently made a 10-minute video, The Day the Mountains Shook, for CAN, to provide an update on the current situation in Nepal.

The video examines the progress that Community Action Nepal has made with the reconstruction and regeneration in a number of the communities in which it works.

These are located in the remote Middle Hills and mountainous villages along the border with Tibet. They were the communities in Nepal that were worst affected by the earthquake.

Doug Scott, who together with Dougal Haston were the first Britons to successfully climb Everest, will deliver a fundraising lecture at Cranleigh School, Surrey on 5 May. His Everest the Hard Way talk will be followed by an update on the progress of CAN’s reconstruction projects in Nepal.

More details of the CAN report are on the Community Action Nepal website.