Sindhupalchok is among one of the poorest districts in Nepal. Approximately 45% of the population live under poverty line, with 52% of the population with food sufficiency for less than nine months. The district was one of the highly affected districts due to the devastating earthquakes of 2015. Even after two years of the earthquake, people in the district continue to struggle to restore their livelihood to normal condition. Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) designed Rebuilding Family Farming (RFF) Programme for responding to the 2015 earthquake which includes phase-wise approach to responding earthquake affected community needs: i) livelihood provision, ii) livelihood protection, and iii) livelihood promotion. 

Enhancing economic and social resilience of earthquake-affected Community in Sindhupalchok (ESRS) is a project funded by Mercy Relief (Republic of Singapore). The project is designed building on the outcomes of the phase I and II of the RFF programme in Sindhupalchok district and is in line with the programmatic framework in RFF phase III i.e. focusing on increasing income, employment and building resilient livelihoods. ESRS is implemented in Lisankhu Pakhar Rural Municipality (wards 2, 3 and 4). The project will run till the end of June 2020 and its impact group consists of 1050 households. ESRS mainly tries to capitalize and harness potentials for improving the economic and social resilience of the disaster hit communities in Sindhupalchok. The two expected outcomes of the project are: i) earthquake-affected community have increased income and employment opportunities through engagement in agricultural value chains, and ii) enhanced resilience of disaster risk prone communities and households by building local capacity to plan and implement CBDRMPs and LDRMPs.