UC Merced students raising funds for Nepal earthquake victims

A Nepal native studying for his doctorate at UC Merced enlisted the help of his friends this week to raise money to help the country rocked by an earthquake that has killed more 5,000, according to the latest reports.

Jiba Dahal, 31, the external vice president of UC Merced’s Graduate Student Association, has family living in Pokhara, a city about 75 miles from the epicenter of the disaster, which struck about noon Nepalese time on Saturday.

Dahal, who is studying for a doctorate in physics, said he was asleep in his Merced bed when the 7.8-magnitude quake struck around midnight Pacific Standard Time. He got a call from a friend early the next morning, which caught him up to speed.

“That’s shocking news,” he said. “He was asking about my family. (I thought) ‘Oh my goodness, what happened to my family?’ ”

After a few hours of hand-wringing and trying to get through a overloaded network of international calls, he learned that his family was safe. Their home did sustain some damage to one wall, he said.

Dahal, who has lived in Merced since 2013, said he knew he wanted to help quake victims. Merced doesn’t have a large Nepalese community, he said, but he knew his friends and colleagues on campus would be willing to help.

“We need to do something,” he said.

With the help of the Graduate Student Association, Dahal started collecting money from students and faculty Monday. Then the group set up a table Tuesday outside the university library.

Jasmine Marshall Armstrong, the association secretary, said students and faculty have been generous. “We had professors, we had staff members, we had students who were giving up their money that they were going to use for lunch on campus,” the 37-year-old said.

Armstrong, a doctoral student from Pismo Beach, said the effort raised nearly $200 on the first day, and it continues to collect cash. Online donations for the association’s GoFundMe page, a website that gathers donations through crowdsourcing, had reached nearly $400 by Wednesday afternoon.

According to reports, aid reached the remote earthquake-shattered mountain villages of Nepal for the first time Wednesday. Police said late Wednesday the official death toll in Nepal had reached 5,266. The disaster injured twice that many and left tens of thousands homeless.

Helicopters brought food, temporary shelter and other aid to hamlets north of Kathmandu, the capital, in the mountainous Gorkha District near the epicenter of Saturday’s quake. Entire clusters of homes there were reduced to piles of stone and splintered wood.

President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Sushil Koirala and discussed U.S. military and civilian efforts already underway to help Nepal, the White House said.

In Merced, members of the Graduate Student Association take time they could have used to study for next week’s finals to get what they can in donations, said member Violet Barton, a doctoral student who lives in Merced.

The association’s members decided it was important to do what they could. “This matters to all of us,” the 51-year-old said. “We feel the call to come forward.”

UC Merced’s association plans to give the money it raises to the Nepal prime minister’s National Relief Fund.

To give to the UC Merced Graduate Student Association’s effort, go to www.gofundme.com/sxjkzw.

The American Red Cross also takes donations for the cause at http://www.redcross.org/.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published April 29, 2015 at 1:50 PM with the headline "UC Merced students raising funds for Nepal earthquake victims."