Nepal didn’t end with a fundraiser last spring to help victims of an earthquake that rocked Kathmandu.Instead, the people involved found that this area already had some relationships with a country that’s been called “the gateway to Southeast Asia” and have forged new ones.“After the benefit, there was such an outpouring of support. We decided we wanted to do something better, something stronger,” said Purna Shrestha, a native of Nepal who owns Here & Abroad Bistro and Bakery in downtown Fredericksburg. Shrestha heads a committee that’s creating the Fredericksburg–Kathmandu Nepal Sister City program, which received a unanimous endorsement from the City Council at its Dec. 8 meeting. This will be Fredericksburg’s fifth Sister City civic organization. All promote cultural and commercial ties. The other four are with Este, Italy; Fréjus, France; Princes Town, Ghana; and Schwetzingen, Germany.Shrestha said the Kathmandu Sister City is “the most exciting one,” noting that plans are already in motion to include a Nepali cultural festival in the University of Mary Washington’s annual Multicultural Fair on April 9. The earthquake that set the stage for this latest Sister City was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal in 81 years. At least 9,000 people died and thousands more were injured. Among the survivors was a 15-year-old boy who’d been buried under debris for five days until Robert Schoenberger of Spotsylvania County and fellow members of a Virginia search and rescue team helped to find and rescue him. Held on June 14 at the Inn at the Old Silk Mill on Princess Anne Street, it featured local musicians as well as Prem Raja Mahat, a native of Nepal whom NPR dubs “the Bob Dylan of Kathmandu.” Fredericksburg-area artists also donated works to the silent auction, and restaurateurs provided Nepalese food. The event raised more than $16,000, which Rise Nepal used to provide 150 temporary shelters for those left homeless by the earthquake.The idea to form a Sister City with Kathmandu grew out of meetings with the fundraiser’s organizers as well as a growing regional network of supporters, Caprara said.Letters of interest and support for sister city relations were exchanged last month between Fredericksburg Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw and Rudra Singh Tamang, Kathmandu’s chief executive, he said. -
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