It all started when…

rebuilding after the earthquake

One of the first methods of natural building implemented by the Conscious Impact team, was Compressed Stabilized Earth Bricks (CSEBs), a building method developed by the Auroville Earth Institute. Earth bricks are composed of soil, sand, and a small percentage of cement. CSEBs are a low impact building method due to the availability of locally sourced materials (Soil!), and are unlike traditionally made clay bricks in that they do not require curing by wood fire. Lumber extraction from Nepal’s natural forests led to drastic deforestation, which contributed to many of the landslides that destroyed homes and took lives in the aftermath of the earthquake.

These CSEBs have been utilized in several projects in the community, and were used to build over 30 homes in the village of Takure. Conscious Impact was able to sell CSEBs to local businesses and families at a significantly subsidized price thanks to our volunteer donors, as well as provided full-time employment at a livable wage to over a dozen local Nepali staff members. Those jobs allowed them to remain in the village with their families rather than move to Kathmandu or abroad to seek work.

In 2019 after assisting with the construction of homes in Takure, the Brick Training Center phased out of operation as the rebuilding of all the homes in our region reached completion. In the years since Conscious Impact has continued to provide other forms of alternative building trainings to the community, as well as built several earthbag structures both for communal use and for individual families.

Natural Building: Earthbags, Rammed Earth, Cob, and more!

In addition to producing CSEBs, Conscious Impact explored other methods of natural building, both to serve the community and continue to build out our volunteer headquarters. We built two earthbag homes for two community members, an earthbag structure for the local coffee cooperative, a rammed earth structure for the local women’s cooperative, and used a combination of all these methods along with earthen cob to build out a kitchen and dorm to more comfortably host volunteers.

Community Water Projects

In addition to our building construction projects, Conscious Impact funded and built a 40 thousand liter water tank in 2019. In the following years, we implemented two wide-scale water infrastructure projects in collaboration with a Nepali engineer named Krishna Adhikari. For rural communities, as is the same for communities everywhere — water is life. Families need need water to drink, water to cook, water to clean, water to shower, water for hygiene, water for their garden, and not to mention water for their livestock — another critical source of income. Families in the villages of Takure and Bimire were walking back and forth from spring sources to retrieve water, sometimes walking up to 3 hours per day, carrying 20 kgs or 40 lbs at a time.

The Takure Water Project was completed in September 2022 and provided 96 households with clean drinking water direct to their homes, while the Bimire Water Project was completed in May 2023 and provided an additional 82 households with clean drinking water direct to their homes.

The start of our regenerative agriculture program

Along with rebuilding homes, one of the clearest ways Conscious Impact learned it could support rural communities was to provide tools and resources that improved economic livelihoods. It was apparent that this could be achieved through the primary means in which villagers had lived for countless generations — farming. Local farmers primarily grow subsistence crops like rice, millet, and corn, which support feeding their families but do not produce ample income in a world of increasing wealth disparity. We began first by collaborating with local farmers, like our longtime community partner Narayan Bhattarai, on how to utilize organic farming principles, and to grow more lucrative crops like fruit and citrus trees. During our second year, we became aware that coffee could grow successfully at the elevation where we were operating, so we funded the construction of a coffee nursery to support subsidized distribution of coffee trees. We began providing trainings to local farmers, as well as provided labor to dig holes and carry compost through the many hands of our amazing volunteers. This was the organic (pun intended!) start of our regenerative agriculture program.

The Youth Program

During its first few years, Conscious Impact built relationships with local primary and secondary schools in and around Takure, such as the Takure Primary School, the Bimire Primary School (which was rebuilt with our CSEBs in 2016), the Nawalpur Secondary School, and the Aiselu Kharka Secondary School. At the beginning our engagement looked like volunteers offering fun, English-language activities to students after school, but over time our programming grew to include the programs like the Girls Empowerment Program — a weekly extracurricular class where secondary school aged girls (12 to 17 years) could learn about sexual reproductive health and discuss sociocultural issues they faced in their lives. We also offered the After School Program — a daily after school space for primary aged children (3 to 11 years) where they received homework help and participated in education-based learning games. In between these offerings, we also organized Environmental Awareness Days, where both at their schools and at our volunteer camp, local students learned about recycling, how to reduce waste and sort trash, organic farming, natural building, and agro-forestry practices that could benefit both their food systems and local forest ecology.

Conscious Impact continued offering youth programs to the local community through COVID up until 2023, when the program was paused due to staffing and budgetary insufficiencies. Conscious Impact plans to restart the Youth Program sometime in 2025.