My Nonprofit Reviews

I have known and admired the works of Geohazards International (GHI) since mid -1990s when I was Chairman of Aga Khan Housing Board, Pakistan (now Aga Khan Planning and Building Services). GHI’s trailblazing work in School earthquake safety, urban earthquake risk mitigation, retrofitting of lifeline building to make them seismically safe are powerful and admirable interventions to mitigate seismic related risks.
GHI has done pioneering work in school earthquake safety in the developing world and serves as first point of reliable reference and best practices. The interventions suggested by GHI are simple, practical and in-expensive. The interventions have focused on not only improving school buildings and school construction practices, but integrating awareness activities with earthquake engineering so that the school buildings and their contents would better resist earthquakes, and that children and teachers would be prepared to respond aptly to strong earthquakes. As the past Chairman of Aga Khan Education Service, Pakistan we referred and relied on school earthquake safety work of GHI extensively.
One of the most tragic aspects of the October 8, 2005 Kashmir earthquake was the disastrous performance of schools. Over 8,000 schools were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, resulting in the death of more than 17,000 school children and serious injuries (which also required amputations) of more than 20,000 other children. An entire generation is at risk on every school day in northern Pakistan. GHI’s work in school earthquake safety was extensively referred to in the post- earthquake re-building process by the government and NGOs.

I have also firsthand seen GHI’s work in rural Nepal and the work done for OECD and some of their activities in India. These are very commendable and top quality initiatives. GHI’s work in awareness raising and programmatic interventions are great source of knowledge and resource to developing countries in high seismic risk areas.

Abid Shaban
(past Chairman Aga Khan Housing Board,Pakistan and Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan)

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