THIS week marks a year since two devastating earthquakes hit Nepal, claiming the lives of nearly 9,000 people and leaving thousands homeless.

Today, people inhabiting the remote rural communities high in the Himalayan mountains are still struggling to come to terms with what happened and move on with their lives.

Sitting close to his humble temporary home, made from mud and corrugated iron, in his village an hour’s walk from the nearest accessible road, Manoj Rana remembers the fateful day.

"It was like something from the Stone Age," he says. "Many of the animals were dead and the smell was terrible."

Rana, 20, had been in the capital, Kathmandu, when the first earthquake – measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale – hit on April 25, exactly one year ago tomorrow. Shocked and numbed by the sheer scale of the devastation, he immediately decided to return to his childhood home to join the local rescue effort.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he was to witness upon his arrival. "I instructed the young [people] to clear the carcasses from the rubble and bury them," says Rana, with a quiet authority. "Then I helped to set up a community kitchen. Everyone was hungry by then.

"For the first few days, we only had enough food for one meal a day. We were very happy when the relief started to arrive."

A second earthquake followed on May 12, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. Villages like Rana’s were left in desperate need of food, water, shelter, medicines and other essentials. Meanwhile entire communities were cut off from the outside world, as landslides rendered roads impassable.

And yet, in the midst of extreme catastrophe, people found the inner strength to offer simple acts of kindness to others who were suffering.

In the village of Simjung, Gorkha district, most homes were flattened by the quake, recalls primary school teacher Dhan Kumari Magar. Many people were inside at the time.

Magar, 44, helped to rescue 28-year-old mother Krishna Thapa and her six-month-old baby from the remains of her destroyed house. "They were trapped under the debris and the woman was unconscious," says Magar. "We cleared the rubble and took them out safely, but when the woman woke she was in a lot of pain. It was terrible to see them under the collapsed house.

"I also looked after the injured patients: I boiled water and helped clean their wounds. There were no medical supplies and we had to use old clothes as bandages."

Chandra Gale, a 32-year-old construction worker, told a similar story: "Once the earth stopped shaking we helped rescue people buried in the rubble, removed dead bodies and looked for the injured. The situation was very difficult: no-one came to the rescue as the roads were closed. We began to clear the roads ourselves and formed a group to set up temporary shelters and request relief materials."

Gale, Rana and Magar are some of the local heroes captured by acclaimed photographer Gideon Mendel, who travelled to Nepal with Christian Aid ahead of the earthquake’s first anniversary.

Each portrait shows Nepalese women and men in the remnants of their wrecked homes. Each is accompanied by a personal account of the life-saving acts of kindness they gave, or received, during the emergency.

Laxmi Gurung, a 30-year-old hotel owner from Baluwa, Gorkha, is one of the women featured. "We had stored food [in the hotel] so I was able to feed people in the days after the earthquake," she says.

"Many neighbours gathered and I would cook for them. Everyone was hungry. When people were going through such a miserable time, I did not think twice about giving them food."

These humble acts of kindness crossed generational, cultural and social boundaries: they even extended towards those regarded as the bottom of India’s caste system, the Dalit people, often referred to as "untouchables".

Bal and Phul Sunar from Jymarung in Dhading explain: "We are Dalit people so we did not stay with the rest of the community. Instead we made temporary shelters in a nearby field, using old materials from our collapsed houses."

They were surprised when help arrived from an unlikely source.

"Later we received some zinc sheets from an upper caste man. He provided four zinc sheets for every Dalit household here. He knows we are very poor and have no income.

"Another upper caste man in a neighbouring village also gave us rice, oil and salt – that was a big support at the time."

Experiences like these were echoed across disaster-hit communities in Nepal – one of the world’s poorest countries.

In fact, an astounding 94 per cent of people surveyed in Gorkha and Dhading districts said they had supported fellow community members after the earthquakes, according to new research from Christian Aid.

Based on responses from almost 200 people, these findings show how resilient and self-reliant communities can be in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, according to the charity.

Christian Aid’s Senior Emergency Programme Manager, Dipankar Patnaik, based in Nepal, comments: "Disasters such as these often spark fears of civil unrest and a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ mentality, as affected people become increasingly desperate.

"Yet, as the research illustrates, it is also a time when extraordinary acts of humanity take place; when people, despite all they have lost, give what they can to help others in need."

Whether it’s Nepal, 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, people often lean towards altruism, co-operation and resourcefulness, rather than selfishness and disorder during times of crisis, says author Rebecca Solnit in her book, A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Such co-operation and resourcefulness – so vividly demonstrated in Nepal – merits wider recognition.

Christian Aid believes that more lives can be saved – and more money can be saved – if the international community invests in supporting disaster-prone, impoverished communities to become more resilient in the face of a crisis.

In 2014, the world spent $24.5bn responding to global humanitarian crises. However, every £1 spent helping communities prepare for disasters can save up to £4 in emergency response costs.

At next month’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Christian Aid will call for a global commitment to help vulnerable communities better prepare for future emergencies, to equip them with the knowledge and training to survive a crisis and respond more effectively before aid arrives.

If we can help people learn how to protect themselves and their families before a disaster strikes, then we can ensure fewer lives are lost in catastrophes like the Nepal earthquakes.

For more information on Christian Aid’s new multimedia project, Nepal Aftershocks: The People’s Truth About Aid, visit: www.christianaid.org.uk/nepal-aftershocks