In the early hours of 26th August 2026, a glacier collapse in the mountains near the Nepal-China border sent a wall of ice, rock, and water crashing down the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers into Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts.
Entire settlements were inundated in minutes, and roads, bridges and homes were destroyed. The confirmed death toll is over 1,400. Rescue teams worked for days to find people buried under mud and debris.
Pastor Ruben Rasaili, Feed The Hungry’s long-standing partner in Nepal, was on the ground within hours of the flooding. Leaving his home in Kathmandu, he visited the mud and wreckage to see for himself what families needed in the immediate aftermath.
“I saw thousands of houses swept away, and people crying for help,” Ruben told us on his way back from the flood region. “They don’t have food, they don’t have clothes, they don’t have a place to live.” He has also been helping directly with rescue efforts – “we are carrying some of the women who have lost their family members… we’re taking them to Kathmandu to help them,” he said.
Feed The Hungry UK responded immediately, sending $5,000 (around £3,800) to support Ruben’s initial response. In the days since, working with local suppliers, Ruben has been sheltering families who have lost everything and distributing bags of rice and gas canisters so that people can cook a hot meal again. Emergency tents were erected for families with nowhere left to shelter, and some people were given refuge in a Community Centre in Kathmandu. Over 1,000 people each day were fed at the Community Centre with food purchased by Feed The Hungry.
This is not the first time Ruben and Feed The Hungry have stood together in disaster. Our partnership began in 2015, when Ruben travelled with our own team through earthquake-hit villages, bringing rice, salt and oil to families in Gorkha, and to the Musaha and Dalit communities that international aid so often overlooked. In the decade since, that partnership has deepened: together we have drilled wells for rural villages, regularly fed children through two schools, and are building an orphanage.
That relationship is why, when disaster struck again, Ruben was ready to move – and why Feed The Hungry was ready to move with him.
