Wide Open Trails’ Support of Charitable Causes
By joining our tours you are able to make a charitable donation as part of your payment. On all of our advertised tours £10 has been added to the price to allow us to support our chosen charitable causes. For every booking which includes a £10 donation Wide Open Trails matches this by giving £10 of our own money. If you chose not to support our chosen charities in this way you are able to inform us by ticking the box on your Booking Form.
During 2009 our tours in the UK, European Alps, and Canadian Rockies will be used to make a contribution to the valuable work carried out by Brathay Hall Trust (registered charity number: 1021586).
Our tours in the Himalayan Foothills of Nepal will be used to raise money to support the sustainable projects carried out by Community Action Nepal (registered charity number: 1067772).
Brathay Hall Trust is an educational charity that has been involved in delivering personal development programmes for disadvantaged children and young people for over 60 years.
Brathay uses adventurous outdoor activities and other media to provide learning opportunities focused on specific personal and social development outcomes.
As the national charity that empowers young people to make a positive contribution to society they work with some of the most disadvantaged children and young people in the UK and provide national leadership focused on their development, in particular, transforming the lives of those at risk of falling out of mainstream society and becoming part of the problem commonly described as “antisocial behaviour”.
Their work produces the following outcomes:
- empowering young people to be leaders through the development of personal, social and leadership skills
- engaging disadvantaged young people to reduce behaviour that puts them at risk and improve their chances of achieving positive outcomes
- providing positive activities to develop young people who are confident to lead safe, healthy and fulfilling lives
- developing the children and young people’s workforce to improve outcomes for children, young people and their families
- providing vocational development for employers and agencies committed to investing in vocational training for young people
- creating partnerships with private sector employers to support engagement of leaders and teams in a way that integrates with socially responsible corporate missions.
If you would like to find out more about the valuable work carried out by Brathay Hall Trust please visit www.brathay.org.uk or call: 015394 39728 for more information.
The mountaineer who founded Community Action Nepal is Doug Scott. He reached over 40 Himalayan summits, including Everest and Kangchenjunga, before taking an active interest in the welfare of the people who had in effect helped to bring him relative fame and fortune.
Inspired by the philanthropic work of Mike Cheyney and his Sherpa Co-operative, Doug launched the Specialist Trekking Co-operative (STC) in 1989. STC was born out of concern at the dreadful conditions of labour in the trekking industry in a country where everything was left to market forces, where there was very little in the way of rule and regulation, and nobody to enforce them. The main ethos was simply to provide fair remuneration and adequate conditions for not only the local permanent staff, but also for the porters.
The philosophy and approach behind the valuable work of Community Acton Nepal is:
- totally driven by the needs of the mountain people of Nepal
- undertaken at the request of the communities themselves – the charity doesn’t impose their ideas, they listen to and help the local people achieve what they feel they need
- to ensure that all of their projects are fully sustainable and maintained with an ongoing and indefinite commitment
- to involve local people from the design stage to completion of projects and beyond
- to avoid donor dependency and to encourage a sense of ownership and responsibility for all projects through active involvement from the villagers (they provide one third of the project’s needs through the provision of labour, expertise and local materials)
Community Action Nepal feels that fundamentally all of their projects are a joint effort between the mountain people of Nepal and CAN. They see themselves as one community of which Wide Open Trails is proud to support.
If you would like to find out more about the valuable work carried out by Community Action Nepal please visit www.canepal.org.uk or call Ruth Moore on: 017684 84842 for more information.