Urgent appeal for Tents

Dear ACEbook Subscribers and Friends of ACE,

American Conservation Experience President Chris Baker has a special connection to Nepal. His brother in law is Nepalese and co-founded an environmental NGO in Kathmandu called Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness (ECCA). Many of his friends and extended family are deeply rooted in the philanthropic and environmental movement in Nepal.

ECCA has asked ACE to reach out to the conservation industry and to our individual members and followers to address a very specific need for tents. Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese, including untold numbers of children, are homeless.

Chris’ family has set up a distribution chain to ensure that the tents rapidly reach the villages in foothills of the Himalayas that have been utterly destroyed and where night time temperatures present a crisis situation.

A medical team will be departing San Francisco between May 6th and 10th and has special allowance from the airline to transport 200 tents.
Subsequent flights are being arranged, and the need for shelter will persist for many months and through the winter, so there is really no limit to the number of tents that are desperately needed and that can be distributed.

Any tent in good repair is needed, including 2 – 3 person tents for small families, 6 person tents, and larger wall style tents for medical clinics and triage.

On behalf of countless Nepalese without shelter, and on behalf of Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness, ACE is appealing to all conservation organizations to donate as many tents in working condition as possible. This is a direct, tangible, locally-managed way that the conservation community can help in a crisis of unimaginable scale.

If you are able to make a tent donation, please ship tents to:
American Conservation Experience
Attn: Nepal Tent Drive
333 Soquel Ave.,
Santa Cruz, CA 95062

If you are located near an ACE branch and would like to drop off a tent please visit our Contact Page for a branch near you.
Update: A message from Chris Baker
4/30/2015 – 1:00 PM PST

"There are many media reports and a lot of conflicting information coming out of Nepal. Please understand that this tent drive is a result of a direct, on the ground appeal for help that ACE received from ECCA, a local NGO in Kathmandu. It is true that well intended individuals risk inundating Nepal with random goods that languish undistributed. This targeted appeal to ACE to help gather tents does not fall into that category. ECCA has arranged transport of the tents into Kathmandu and has a local distribution chain set up. Just one suburb of Kathmandu alone needs 200,000 tents, a need that is not being addressed by the international aid community on that scale. Every tent counts and each donated tent will quickly reach a needy family.
Thanks to everyone for pulling together and supporting this relief effort.”

ACE President and CEO, Chris Baker