Nearly 9,000 people died in the earthquakes that ravaged Nepal in April and May. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless and many still need food, clean water and adequate shelter.
Bryan and Denise Cupoli of Rutland, traveled to Nepal in 2007 and fell in love with its beauty, culture and people. They say news of the earthquakes hit hard.
“Places where we had been had been leveled and destroyed,” says Bryan. “Things that we had seen personally no longer existed and people we came in contact with had been affected directly.”
“We started questioning — what can we do?” adds Denise.
The couple teamed up with The Tara Foundation, a New Hampshire nonprofit that’s been providing aid to Nepal since 2007. Five members of the foundation's board of directors live in Vermont, near Killington and in Norwich.
This Saturday, at the Andrea Mead Lawrence Lodge at Pico Mountain in Mendon, they’ll host a joint auction of stunning photographs of Nepal taken by professional photographer Jim Block, of Etna, New Hampshire. Block has traveled to Nepal four times with the Tara Foundation. Other donated items such as pottery, a season ski pass and a trekking kit will also be auctioned off.
Leeli Bonney founded the Tara Foundation and says money they sent to Nepal earlier this year helped buy metal roofing and replace a medical clinic that had been destroyed.
“We’ve actually seen photographs of the finished clinic,” says Bonney, smiling. “It’s a small, one room, dirt-floor stone building but it’s there and it’s working and it’s really exciting.”
“We even got a video of some of the roofing being delivered,” adds Bonney.
The Cupolis are calling this joint fundraising effort "Mountains to Mountains, People to People." "We are connecting our mountains to Nepal's mountains, our people to the Nepali people," says Denise.
She says 100 percent of the funds raised this weekend will go to relief efforts in Nepal.
