the alpine fund

one of the things that jen and i were excited about when moving to bishkek was getting involved with the alpine fund, a local non-for-profit with the goal of offering "children and young adults in orphanages, residential facilities and hot lunch programs the chance to escape the confines of their daily surroundings and challenge themselves in a mountain environment. Through hikes, climbs, education programs, individual mentoring, and college scholarships we seek to gain the trust of these youth and work with them to brighten their future through education and mountain adventure."

on thursday, we attended their first volunteer meeting of the fall. as luck (or fate) would have it, the alpine fund office is literally around the corner (about a two minute walk) from bis.

i had already met adrianna (the local director) once when discussing using alpine fund gear for the outdoor adventure club that jen and i run at bishkek international school. garth, the founder of the alpine fund, was in town (he had been in tashkent, uzbekistan for the past six months and had recently taken a job with USAID as the regional education director) as were several new volunteers from the states and some local interns.

after introductions, we discussed the mission of the alpine fund (see above) and what the organization's goals were for the coming year. the organization is very much volunteer based and runs on shoestrings as fund raising is minimal and the budget is tight.

i was asked to lead the rock climbing and outings program (weekly trips to the local climbing wall... scary!... and twice monthly outings up into the mountains). jennifer was asked to teach english to kids at osh bazaar.

cool program and cool mission. our only hesitation is as garth is checking out and taking a full time job with another ngo (non-government organization) in almaty... it will be interesting to see how much direction and success the program. but we are both excited about the opportunities it could provide us and the good we could do for some local kids.