Sudbury teen Ayugma Acharya fundraising to help Nepal quake survivors

A teenager in Sudbury wants to help the country of his birth in the terrible aftermath of an earthquake lastweekend.

Ayugma Acharyaleft Nepal with his family when he was in Grade 3. Now, a student at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School in Sudbury, Acharya said he was shocked to see the disaster unfolding.

"It's terrible, it's terrible," he said.

Updated reports from officials in Nepal on Tuesday saidthe death toll topped 5,000 people and was expected to climb.Acharya said news of the devastationhit himhard.

"I expected it in the sense that geologists didpredict it around the end of 2013 that this will happen, but I never expected it to be this big and this soon."

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Acharya said he still has relatives living in Nepal, and his mother has had ahard time reaching people on her side of the family in the country's hard-hitcapital,Kathmandu.

He said some of his family managed to get word out about their condition on Facebook, andhe said looking at the pictures they posted,the situation looked grim.

"When this tragedy first struck ... they slept on the cold hard grounds of the roads," said Acharya."The only thing covering them from the wind and the rain was a thin bedsheet." He said people have been told not to go back into buildings until the aftershocks stop.

Acharyahas started an onlinefundraising campaignto raise money for victims of the crisis, and he said he plans to go door-to-door collecting funds as well.

"I've been told by lots of people that maybe I should just leave the donations to the larger organizations," he said. "But I think as a Nepalese, I'd feel a greater sense of achievement if I did something on my own."

'Lots of little earthquakes are coming'

Luckily, all ofTenzingLimbu'sfamily in Nepal are unharmedafter the7.8 magnitudequake rocked the country on Saturday.

Limbuowns and operates Nepal Handicrafts in the Rainbow Centre mallin downtown Sudbury.His wife and daughters still live in Nepal, and it took more than eleven hours to find out if they were alive.

"[My wife] lives in a remote place," he said. "She told me all the communication things were all not working."

"I just talked to her ... and she says still lots of little earthquakes are coming and they are staying outside the house."

Limbu said he's deeply relieved thathis two daughters in Kathmandu are also safe, and no one he knows was hurt or killed.

"I'm praying for good for Nepal, and quake recovery," he said. "And hopefully everyone will stand up on their own feet soon."