Sonder Bikes
How Foundation grants have funded safety training for Nepal's trekking porters and an outdoor day for children at a Kathmandu children's hostel.
Nepal's trekking industry runs on people most visitors never think about: the porters carrying loads up mountain trails, often without proper equipment or training. A Kathmandu charity has spent 25 years trying to change that, and its work has widened to include some of the city's most vulnerable children too.
Training the people who carry the industry
KEEP, the Kathmandu Environmental Education Project, works at grassroots level with the guides and porters who make Nepal's tourism industry function. Porters carry the heavy loads trekkers won't, and Sadiksha Basnet, KEEP's programme officer, says they're routinely the most neglected and underpaid people in it.
"They go trekking without proper equipment, which results in high chances of getting high altitude sickness, sometimes even losing their feet and fingers," Basnet says. "So workshops to provide first aid and other training are essential in helping them become aware and professional in their field."
A Foundation grant went toward one round of these workshops, and a follow-up three-day programme reached at least 200 trekking porters around Rasuwa, a hub for guides working the Langtang and Gosaikunda trekking regions. The training covered first aid, personal safety, health and hygiene, and national park rules, alongside porters' legal rights and working conditions.
Srijana Katuwal, a KEEP project officer, reported back on how the group got on. Participants finished the workshop with practical knowledge of mountain safety and their own legal rights, and a clearer sense of how to raise problems with the government and non-government organisations that oversee the industry. Everyone involved, Katuwal said, was glad to have had the chance to build on skills that keep them safer on the trail.
A day outdoors for the children KEEP also supports
KEEP's mission is broader than porters alone: reducing tourism's negative impacts on Nepal while maximising the benefits for its people. That extended to a day trip for 21 girls staying at Children Off The Streets (COTS) Nepal, a hostel for children with no other support, to the National Botanical Garden.
"All these girls staying at the hostel are economically poor and most of them don't have parents," says Manisha Gautam, KEEP's funding and programme research associate. "We wanted to provide opportunities for physical activity and also to stimulate imagination and creativity, help them develop problem-solving skills and encourage interaction with others and the environment."
A £250 award covered transport, entry and coordinator fees. The girls explored the garden, played balloon games and made nature art, going home with a diary and pen each. "The response of the director of COTS Nepal and the children was very overwhelming," Gautam says. "They were both requesting for such activities in coming years as well."
From a mountain trail to a botanical garden, the same grant can reach the people an industry depends on and the children it rarely reaches. If you run a project doing similar work, find out how to apply.