Building safer homes with eco-bricks in Nepal

Project story

Community Impact Nepal is on a mission to make safe houses affordable, replace polluting fired bricks with eco-friendly alternatives, and create dignified livelihoods for the families Nepal's construction industry has left behind. Funds raised in this campaign will go directly to seeding new community-led eco-brick enterprises in disaster-vulnerable districts, helping rural families build safer homes, reducing CO₂ emissions, and protecting the Himalayan landscape from the cascading damage of unsustainable construction.

Our mission

Community Impact Nepal believes that climate action, disaster resilience, and economic dignity are not separate goals, they are the same goal. We support marginalised communities and micro-entrepreneurs to produce eco-friendly bricks, build low-cost disaster-resilient homes, and create jobs in the villages where they live. Our model is grounded in a simple conviction: the people closest to a problem should also be the ones leading its solution. Through training, financing, and partnership, we turn earthquake survivors and rural entrepreneurs into the builders of Nepal's low-carbon future.

Background & problem statement

Nepal is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. The 2015 and 2023 earthquakes destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, and every monsoon brings new floods and landslides. Over 28% of Nepalis live in poverty, dreaming of a safe brick house they cannot afford. Yet the bricks that could rebuild them are poisoning the country: Nepal's fired-brick industry drives 27% of combustion-related CO₂ emissions, fuels hazardous air pollution, traps workers in exploitative conditions, and accelerates Himalayan glacier melt, intensifying the very floods and landslides destroying rural homes. Families like Gulabi Kami's in Jajarkot, a single mother whose tin shelter has been her permanent reality for two years, are trapped in a cycle where the system that should rebuild them is the same system destroying their environment.

Solution

We pioneered CSEB interlocking eco-bricks: non-fired, compressed earth bricks made from local soil, sand or stone dust, and just 8% cement. The result is walls that cost 40% less, withstand earthquakes and floods, and emit 75% less CO₂, saving 9.5 tonnes of CO₂ per house. Crucially, the technology can be produced locally with simple machines, which means villages do not need to import bricks from polluting kilns hundreds of kilometres away. The bricks come from the same earth the home sits on.

Opportunity

Every CSEB enterprise we establish becomes a permanent piece of green infrastructure in a rural village. Once seeded, enterprises continue producing eco-bricks, employing local people, and building homes for years without further subsidy. 95% of homes built through our model are funded directly by families themselves. This means donor funding does not deliver one house, it unlocks an enterprise that delivers hundreds. It is one of the highest-leverage approaches to climate action and rural resilience available today, and it is uniquely positioned to be replicated across South Asia.

How we regenerate

Our approach is holistic and community-led. We mobilise rural villages, train micro-entrepreneurs in brick production and enterprise management, provide collateral-free finance through partner microfinance institutions, train local masons in earthquake-resilient construction, and work alongside families to build their own homes. We deliberately prioritise women, single mothers, Dalit and Janajati entrepreneurs, and returnee migrants, because the construction economy has historically excluded them. Funds from this campaign will help us seed new enterprises in high-emissions districts, train local masons and entrepreneurs, and enable the construction of climate-resilient homes for the most vulnerable families.

Tracking impact

Every enterprise, every home, every job, and every tonne of CO₂ avoided is tracked through our monitoring system. We measure emissions reductions (calculated against fired-brick baselines), enterprise survival rates, family financing ratios, jobs created, and homes completed. Beyond the numbers, we capture qualitative stories from entrepreneurs and families, because impact also lives in the dignity of a single mother running her own brick enterprise, or a Dalit family living in a safe home for the first time. Our impact data has been independently recognised by the World Habitat Awards and the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour.

Our experience

Community Impact Nepal (formerly Build up Nepal) has been working in disaster-affected and climate-vulnerable communities since 2015. To date, we have empowered 200+ community-led enterprises, built 12,000+ homes and 126 schools and public buildings, created 1,943 green jobs, and avoided 122,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions across 300+ rural villages. We are proud winners of the World Habitat Silver Award 2020 and the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour 2020. Our work is anchored by partnerships with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Practical Action, GIZ, Care Nepal, DCA Nepal, Rotary, Tuki Nepal, and the Government of Nepal. From a field office in Rimna, Jajarkot, our team of engineers, social mobilisers, and field coordinators works hand-in-hand with rural communities, every day, village by village, replacing one of South Asia's dirtiest industries from the ground up.

2024/2025 Impact report:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/15IzztCua3kJXPXOjU_W670Ybb4BPAN9w/view?usp=drive_link)