Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal
Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal, (HRDSN) was founded on October 8,1989 by Dutchman Ingo Schnabel in the village of SUNDARIJAL, Baghmati Zone, Kathmandu Valley.''' The first two years this organization was working under the umbrella of His Majesties Government of Nepal's Ministry of Home Affairs (SDU) as a special disaster unit and training center for Nepalese search and rescue workers. A "wolfhound-breeding center" was registered attached to this project with the Ministry of Agriculture. The project provided also livestock to the Nepalese Police Dog Training Center in Maharajgunj, Kathmandu. In 1993 the Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal had to become a Private Limited Company as there was now law prepared for registering any private NGO in the field of National Disaster Aid and SAR (Search and Rescue) groups such as in any other country in the world. SAR & SAR dog-squads were always per definition a private affair everywhere. Lack of vision and political interest in such kind of volunteer organizations prevented the policy makers in Nepal from including these kind of NGO's into their list of foreign sponsored NGO'S. As a result and in order to go on with their work, HRDSN had no other options than becoming a registered company. This has hurt their ability to raise funds for this vital work abroad.
Many similar cases of NGO's in the field of children care, women development or empowerment & educational tools providing NGO's faced problems after 1993 when the first new Industrial policy and NGO policy of Nepal was drafted by lawmakers who were not informed properly AbOUT international NGO-laws and the benefit of a good regulatory set of rules.
HRDSN has its 20th Anniversary on October 8, 2009. The Office of HRDSN is in the city of Pokhara. The Training facility is in Shyauli Bazaar, Lamjung District.
Future plans of HRDSN: Staying at Shyauli Bazaar Headquarters will not be feasible anymore for the Rescue Dog Squad since after almost two decades the school for Children of Rescue Workers there closed down in March 2009. Shyauli Bazaar was always intended to become a tourist resort for fund raising. During that period and now after the 10 year lasting Maoist Peoples War, the board of HRDSN came to the conclusion, that all these years generated a great loss of income and for maintaining in particular their school due to almost zero tourism and trekkers.
A bit late for the long and carefully planned design to become a full blown National Disaster Relief Unit that they have dreamed of right from the beginning in 1989 and quite late also for the urgent necessity to establish a Flying Doctor Service for the remote regions of Nepal.
To begin with this now HRDSN is trying to sell its large resort with Restaurant, fish farm, green houses, farmland and Bavaria Lodge plus all the school buildings in order to generate the necessary funding for her Disaster Unit and helicopter Service Unit. They do not sell HRDSN'S 20 beds hospital there. The hospital is officially registered with Nepal's Health Authorities as an independent NGO now and is really needed by the local farmers. It has over 6,000 members who are paying farmer families. Recently and due to new laws the Riverside Hospital had to change its name into Riverside Health Center as new criteria have been drawn up by the Ministry of Health. The Health-Ministry of the new Federal Republic of Nepal states that remote area hospitals which have lesser than 50 beds are now considered of being Health-Centers or Health Posts.
Another fact why HRDSN remote base isn't practical anymore is that during that time and Up Until Now the District of Lamjung experienced irreversible loss of young population in the entire Middim Khola Valley. Young workers, farmers, farm hands, porters and their children left the area for safer places either in India or into the urban areas of Nepal, simply to stay alive and bring up their kids without the risk that the Maoists take them away to train them for child soldiers or indoctrinate them.
These young parents and their children have grown away from the farmer's life and have started new ways of living either abroad or in the industrialized areas of Nepal.
See also
- Mountain rescue