Help build shelters for people of Kermanshah

As most of you would know, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake recently hit the western province of Kermanshah in Iran and the neighbouring Iraq. Most of the casualties were in Iran with at least 620 killed and another 8,000 injured. The earthquake has left about 70,000 people homeless and nearly three months after the earthquake there have been no official initiatives to provide temporary shelter for the survivors. The majority are living in tents amidst the unforgiving winter temperatures. Kermanshah is home to Iranian Kurds, an ethnic and religious minority who have always been subject to official discrimination and have had their pleas ignored.

A grassroots charity made up of architecture students, volunteers, and local people are building low cost huts using traditional know-how and locally available inexpensive material that provide a temporary- yet much more humane, safe, and durable, shelter for the residents than tents. For approximately NZD160, a “koomeh” (a traditional Iranian hut) can be built in a couple of days for one of more families. The charity is fully reliant on donations for the supply of building material. Please join me in helping the people of Kermanshah by contributing to their most basic need, a warm place they can call home until they piece their lives back together. Please share this wide and far, with your family, friends, colleagues, neighbours. No help is little. Once we reach our goal or an amount close enough, I will transfer the funds to the Koomeh Charity and provide updates.