Our plan is to focus our efforts to be most effective. We are going to rebuild and refurnish the boarding home and schoolrooms in Jyekundo.

100% of your donations will go toward rebuilding. We have a donor covering the cost of transferring funds.

Occurring before 7AM, while many people were at home, the 6.9 (7.1 according to Chinese reporting) magnitude earthquake collapsed buildings in Gyêgu Township, near the epicenter, trapping thousands under rubble. More than 85 percent of the houses in the city of 100,000 people, were destroyed. Cell phone calls late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning painted a grim picture of mass destruction, people searching for family members and of hospitals surrounded by the injured and dying.

Munsel Foundation supports educational projects in Jyekundo. One project is educating 35 elementary school aged nomadic yak herder's children from Rama, Waka and Kortse villages. The children are boarded in Jyekundo, attend a local school and are tutored in the evenings. As of Wednesday night, central time, all the children had been located.

Two children died when the roof collapsed at the school. Two children died on the way to school. One child died leaving the Munsel home compound when the gates fell on him. Several children have been taken to the hospital but are expected to live. One in serious condition has been medivaced to a hospital in Zining or Chendu. All are battered and bruised. Their housefather, Ngawang Kunga, and staff member Tseptra, were struck by falling bricks but managed to crawl out of the rubble and quickly dig out the children who had not yet left for school. Medkyi the cook was in the courtyard when the earthquake occurred. She dug from the outside and the three saved the children.

Wednesday, April 14: Jyekundo is a rubble heap. There is no place to go for shelter. The remaining Munsel Foundation children are sleeping in the courtyard of their old home in temporary tents made of plastic. Ngawang, Tharpa the Tibetan teacher, Tseptra, Medkyi, and other adults were able to get the children's clothing out of the destroyed house. All the furniture and the kitchen were smashed by falling walls and the roof along with building parts from surrounding homes. The food is unuseable.

Local Tibetans estimate that several thousand people have died and many more are injured. We have been in phone contact with Ngawang Kunga and will continue to monitor the situation and update this website.

In the rubble of the Munsel Boarding school the land line phone still works. We are in contact multiple times a day. It is a source of strength for the staff, children, and parents that supporters of the projects know what is happening and are gathering funds and plan to help them rebuild their lives and continue to educate the children.

Thursday, April 15: The five children along with four other people who died have been transported to the monastery of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok for the proper rites of death. This is a great relief for the families. Ashe Motup, the little girl who was medivaced has broken legs and a broken collar bone but is expected to live. The staff found a truck bed and have made a sleeping place for the kids. Food is in short supply. They were able to get some ramen noodles but not enough.

Saturday, April 17: Looking for aid to arrive and where to get food supplies, tarps and tents.

Sunday, April 18: Ashe Motup is talking, eating and happy with her new toys and some money given by donors at the hospital. For the first time the 12 children still left in Jyekundo were not crying in the background. The staff have been given relief blankets, more ramen noodles, some barley flour, and tarps. The kids are warm, have full stomachs and a tarp to cover the truck bed. It has snowed since the earthquake.

The feeling is more upbeat. This is our karma. We are alive, we have food, and we will make the best of the situation. The feeling continues among the village people that it is a miracle that only five children died.

Monday morning April 19 (Jyekundo time) - The staff expects to get one or more tents today.

April 20 - 30 - Each day has brought a little better life in the rubble. They kids and staff have enough food, water, fuel and a stove, tents with bedding and clothes. Most of the children have gone back to the villages. They will be there for two months.

May 3rd - Now the main topic of conversation is rebuilding. How and when and where? We have plans to rebuild the buildings on the land we purchased in 2007. Sifting through the cement and mud bricks and blocks, timbers and walls our staff and family members have not found very much that is still usable. They early on got as much bedding as they could find and that was what kept them warm as was possible during the first few days. We will have to replace almost everything except the telephone.

Ashe Motup has returned from the hospital with stories of kindness and an armload of gifts.

Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in Qinghai. The prefecture has an area of 188,794 km² and its capital is Gyêgu township in Yushu county. It is the place of the old Tibetan trade mart of Jyekundo (Gyêgu) and is still famous for it's yearly horse festival . Culturally the area belongs to Kham in eastern Tibet. It is one of the poorest areas in China.

The list of remembering who has died. We will update it as we have more information. People are still looking for family members in the rubble, around hospitals, and at makeshift campsites.

Kortse Village Families:

One family has lost a brother and the sister is severely injured and expected to die

One family has lost their father

One family has lost a son, his wife and an uncle

One Munsel school girl and one boy have died

Waka Village Families:

One family has lost a daughter

One Munsel school girl has died

Rama Village Families:

One Munsel school girl has died

One family lost a daughter

Nangchen City:

One Munsel school girl has died

Please remember the people of Yushu County.