Runners in Salt Lake City turn a July morning into transition homes
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- MRN
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- Fundraising
By the summer of 2016 the flow of emergency donations that follows a disaster had dried up, as it always does, and the village still had several hundred houses left to build.
The response from Utah was a road race. The first annual 5K Run and Walk for Nepal took place on 30 July 2016 in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Tribune covered it under the headline "Utahns run, walk to raise money for Nepal quake relief".
The organisers were Anju Thapaliya Sharma, Raju Subedi, Sijani Giri and a group of friends. Apa Sherpa, the Utah attorney general Sean D. Reyes, and Mrs Nepal Rajani Thapa attended. Himalayan Kitchen, Eyebrow Art by Sonu and the South Asian Sensation Group sponsored the race or raised funds alongside it.
The organisation had put out a public call for volunteers three weeks earlier, offering nothing in return except a certificate. It is a small detail, but it describes the operating model: no paid staff, no agency, a website form and a community that answered it.
