Whenever a disaster happens, the first thing we do is count the damage. We count the houses that have been destroyed, the roads that have been washed away, the bridges that have collapsed, the fields that have been buried and the lives that have been lost. We try to put a number on everything because numbers help us understand the scale of a disaster and, eventually, the amount of money and resources that will be required to rebuild. This is necessary. Nepal needs roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water systems and safe settlements, and rebuilding them will require serious engineering, planning and investment. But the more I think about reconstruction, the more I feel that there is something important we often leave out of the calculation. We talk about rebuilding houses, but we do not talk enough about rebuilding homes. For me, there is a difference between a house and a home. A house can be made of stone, mud, brick, concrete, timber or steel. It can be designed by an architect and constructed by an engineer and contractor. But a home is something much more than the structure itself. A home is created through care, management, relationships, food, memories, security, nurturing and the everyday effort of making life work. And if there is one group of people in Nepal who understand how to make a home out of almost nothing, I believe it is our women. I have seen this throughout my life, particularly in communities where resources are limited and life is not always easy. Nepali women have a remarkable ability to manage what they have and somehow make it enough. They can take a small amount of money and decide what the family needs today, what can wait until tomorrow and what must be saved for a difficult day. They manage food, water, children, elderly family members, farming, livestock, household finances and relationships, often without anyone formally recognizing the knowledge and skills involved. We rarely call it expertise because it is simply what women are expected to do. But if we were to put some of these abilities into an academic curriculum, we would probably call them household management, resource management, community psychology, crisis management, financial planning and resilience building. A disaster changes everything in a matter of minutes. A flood comes through a settlement, a landslide takes away a house, a river changes its course or an earthquake turns a familiar place into rubble. Suddenly, the things that made everyday life possible are gone. The kitchen is gone. The food storage is gone. The beds are gone. Clothes are gone. Livestock may be gone. Important documents and savings may be gone. The small agricultural land that supported the family may be damaged. The road to the market may no longer exist. Children are frightened, elderly people need care and nobody knows exactly what the next few weeks will look like. At that moment, emergency relief is absolutely necessary. People need food, water, medicine, temporary shelter and protection. But there comes a point when the emergency workers leave, the tents start disappearing and the headlines move on to something else. That is when another kind of struggle begins. The family has to start living again. And I think this is where the strength of Nepali women becomes particularly visible. A woman who has lost her home does not have the luxury of waiting for everything to become perfect. She starts with whatever is available. She finds a place where the family can sleep. She figures out how to cook. She looks for water. She thinks about her children. She tries to recover whatever household items remain. She starts thinking about food for the next week and income for the next month. If the family depended on farming, she thinks about seeds. If they had livestock, she thinks about how to replace them. If she had a small business, she starts thinking about how it might open again. She does not necessarily call any of this reconstruction. For her, it is simply survival and the responsibility of keeping the family moving. This is why I feel that our idea of reconstruction needs to become much broader. Of course, we need to rebuild infrastructure. In fact, we need to rethink some of the infrastructure we have built in the past. If a road has been repeatedly damaged because it has been excavated carelessly into an unstable hillside or built too close to a river corridor, simply reconstructing the same road in the same way does not necessarily mean we have rebuilt wisely. If a settlement has become increasingly exposed to floods and landslides, rebuilding the same houses in the same place may only postpone the next disaster. We need safer settlements, climate-responsive infrastructure, better engineering and more appropriate planning. But while we are doing all of that, we also need to look inside the household. What happens to the woman whose house has been rebuilt but who has no money to buy basic household necessities? What happens to the family whose new house is standing but whose livestock, seeds, tools and small business have disappeared? What happens to a woman who knows exactly how to restart her livelihood but has no capital to do so? This is where I believe financial support can make a very different kind of impact. Instead of thinking only about large infrastructure projects, I would like to see a serious mechanism for supporting women directly in the recovery of their homes and livelihoods. It could be a dedicated Women-Led Home and Livelihood Recovery Fund, supported by the government, international development partners, private businesses, foundations, philanthropists and ordinary people who want to contribute to Nepal's recovery. The idea does not have to be complicated. A woman who has lost her home could receive a recovery grant to restore the basic things that make the house functional. Another woman could receive financial support to buy livestock. Someone could restart vegetable farming. Someone could purchase a sewing machine and restart tailoring. Someone could reopen a small grocery shop. Another could rebuild a home-based food business. Someone else could receive support to restart a homestay or another local tourism activity. These may appear to be relatively small interventions when compared with the cost of rebuilding a highway or bridge, but for a family they can completely change the speed and direction of recovery. There is something important about putting this money directly into the hands of women. A woman's recovery is rarely only her own recovery. When she starts earning again, her children benefit. Her family benefits. The local shop benefits. The farmer who supplies her benefits. The local economy begins to move again. A woman who restarts her household economy can become part of the process of rebuilding the economy of the entire community. I also think we need to listen to women much more carefully when we rebuild houses and settlements. We have a tendency to believe that technical knowledge always comes from professionals and local knowledge is something secondary. I do not agree with that. An engineer knows how to make a building structurally safe, and we absolutely need that knowledge. An architect knows how to plan spaces. A planner understands settlements and infrastructure. But the woman who has spent twenty years living in that community understands how the house actually functions in everyday life. She knows where the kitchen should be. She knows where food should be stored. She knows how much water the family needs. She knows where children spend their time. She knows how elderly people move through the house. She knows what happens during winter, during the monsoon and during festivals. She knows which traditional features are useful and which ones have become impractical. This knowledge is not a replacement for engineering, but it is an important part of good design. This becomes particularly important for the kind of reconstruction Nepal needs now. We should not simply replace traditional houses with standardized concrete structures everywhere and call it progress. Different parts of Nepal have different climates, cultures, materials, lifestyles and histories. A house in Mustang does not need to be the same as a house in the Terai. A Tamang settlement does not need to look like an urban housing colony. The knowledge embedded in the traditional houses of different communities should not be discarded simply because we are rebuilding. We can combine modern engineering with local knowledge. We can make houses earthquake resilient, safer from floods and landslides and more comfortable while still respecting local materials, culture and identity. And women should be part of that conversation because they understand the house not simply as a structure but as a living space. There is another thing I would like to see. Women should not only receive assistance to rebuild. They should also be given opportunities to participate in the reconstruction itself. Women can be trained and employed as masons, construction assistants, community supervisors, water managers, agricultural technicians and disaster preparedness leaders. They can be involved in local material production and sustainable construction. They can monitor whether reconstruction is actually reaching the families who need it. This is not about saying that women are somehow better than men. It is about recognizing a capacity that already exists within our society and giving it the opportunity to contribute. Nepal cannot afford to rebuild while leaving a huge part of its human potential on the sidelines. Sometimes when I think about disaster recovery, I wonder whether we focus too much on what we can see and too little on what we cannot. A new bridge is visible. A new road is visible. A new school is visible. A new house is visible. But the mother who has started earning again is less visible. The woman who has managed to keep her children in school is less visible. The woman who has restarted her farm is less visible. The woman who has helped five neighbouring families organize themselves after a disaster is less visible. Yet these are also signs of recovery. Perhaps we need to change the way we understand reconstruction in Nepal. Infrastructure is important, but infrastructure is ultimately meant to serve human life. The real measure of recovery should not only be how many kilometres of road we have rebuilt or how many houses have been completed. It should also be how many families have regained their dignity, how many livelihoods have returned, how many children have gone back to school and how many women have been able to stand on their own feet again. This is why my appeal is not simply to build houses for the women of Nepal. My appeal is to help women rebuild their homes, their livelihoods and their sense of security. Give them access to finance. Give them technical support. Give them ownership. Give them a voice in reconstruction. Support the small economic activities that allow them to become independent again. And when we design new settlements and new houses, ask them what they need instead of assuming that we already know. There are many ways the world can contribute to Nepal's reconstruction. Governments can provide funding. International organizations can support programmes. Businesses can contribute through social investment. Foundations and philanthropists can establish recovery funds. Nepalis living abroad can support communities and families. Even individuals who can contribute only a small amount can become part of the effort. But perhaps we need to think differently about where that money goes. We will always need money for roads, bridges and other infrastructure. We cannot rebuild a country without them. But alongside those large investments, perhaps we should also invest in the women who will turn the rebuilt infrastructure back into everyday life. Because I have always believed that Nepali women have a kind of strength that is difficult to measure. They may not always have the formal language to describe it, but they know how to make things work. They know how to nurture people. They know how to manage scarcity. They know how to hold families together. They know how to begin again. A disaster can take away a house in one night. But it cannot easily take away a woman's ability to create a home. She will begin again with whatever she has. A few utensils. A little food. Some clothes. A handful of seeds. A few animals. A small amount of money. Whatever remains. And somehow, slowly, she will make a home again. The question is not whether she can do it. She has been doing it for generations. The question is whether we are willing to stand beside her while she does it. If we are serious about rebuilding Nepal, let us not only rebuild the infrastructure around these women. Let us invest in the women themselves. Let us give them the financial resources, technical support and freedom to rebuild their households and livelihoods in their own way. Because a road may connect a village again, a bridge may reconnect two communities and a new house may provide shelter. But it is a woman, very often, who will walk into that empty house, arrange whatever she has, prepare the first meal, gather her family around her and slowly make it a home again. That is reconstruction too. And perhaps it is time we started valuing it. Bhandari is a Director at Machhapuchhre Bank Ltd.