Alpine Update #7

The Alpine Update is our seasonal newsletter keeping you informed of Alpine Fund activities

The Alpine Fund is starting to receive more attention, not only was there are article about the Alpine Fund in this month's Climbing magazine, UNICEF featured us in their curriculum handbook called 'Kids Inclusive'.

The Alpine Fund welcomes Ilya to our staff. We first met Ilya over two years ago when he was a participant in our summer camp, then a volunteer on our mountain hikes, and now a valued staff member.

Marga Ledo, our volunteer from Spain, is still at the office and working hard writing projects, teaching English and going to the mountains. We could not do it without her.

Information about all our volunteers, including Ryan who is helping with the website, marketing, strategic planning, and volunteer coordination; Dasha, who is helping with writing projects and translating, Patricia who lives and works at the Uch Korgon Children's Home in the Batken Region of Southern Kyrgyzstan, and Kira and Matt - our newest volunteers.

Thanks to the generosity of the staff members of the US embassy in Bishkek the Alpine Fund had a great weekend with kids at the Alpine Base Camp.

In September the Alpine Fund had a "Children and Mountains of Kyrgyzstan" photo exhibition to raise money for trips to our Alpine Base Camp. In the halls of the US embassy we were allowed to hang 20 photos of mountains and pictures of youth from orphanages across Kyrgyzstan. The photos were taken by Damian Wampler, a former Peace Corps Volunteer and Garth Willis, the event was organized by Pamela Johnson, a US embassy employee. We were able to raise over $200 which enabled us to send 10 kids to our mountain cabin for a long weekend. We want to thank all the embassy employees for their support and especially a thanks to Pamela for helping organize this event.

"I’ve dreamt for a long time to go to the mountains. And now my dream came true. We are going to the mountains. Our camp is located at the base of the Ala Archa Mountains. We left our things there and went to the mountains. Ilya led us to the mountains. He told us how to behave ourselves in the mountains. Boys are strong, so they were walking ahead of us, we, girls, were following them. It is difficult to go up the mountains, but the air is fresh in the mountains, it invigorates you. And so we are high up. How beautiful it is here! We observed everything from the heights, played, joked and it was such a pity that we did not reach the snow. Ouh, how bad we wanted that! Time passed by very quickly and we had to return to the camp. There was a fire at the camp in the evening, we sang songs, played games, told jokes and laughed – it was a lot of fun. The next day we were coming back to the children’s home. We wanted to share our impressions with other children. I liked this trip very much."

"On the eighteenth of October around 9 o’clock in the morning we left the Children’s Home to go to the Alpine Fund’s Base Camp next to Ala Archa National Park. There were nine children and three adults there. We arrived and cooked, had lunch and tea. Boys left to collect wood and brought back a lot of wood. Second time two girls went with boys and they climbed the mountains and from up there they saw our Alpine flag, the one we put up a few hours earlier. It was very beautiful. In the evening, after dinner there was a bonfire it was so beautiful and fun, we sang songs and played different games. Later on we went into the house and Ilya told us stories. It was beautiful and clean in the mountains and we had great fun. Thank you to Alpine Fund.

I would like to have a white tablecloth on the table that we eat at. And I want to wish Alpine Fund good luck, prosperity and all the best."

"For a long time we have been waiting this day, the day when we go to the mountains. We wanted this day to come faster. And so, finally, we are in the mountains. Even the air is special here – not as the one in the city, it is fresh and clean. Everyone wanted to go higher in the mountains.

We almost reached the snow. There we saw such a beauty: far in the bottom was the location of our camp, and there mountains all around us, so mysterious, preserving their silence and uniqueness. Up there we played and sang songs. Of course, it was a pity that we did not walk up to the snow; we would have so much fun there! However time flies inexorably and we have to return to the camp. In the evening we had a fire, games, songs, laughter, and jokes. How nice it is to be outdoors! We were returning to the Children’s Home with a lot of impressions, which we shared with our friends there.

I would like Alpine Fund to wash the sleeping bags and to have a bigger table and to have a tablecloth. Of course, they should get carpets on the floor of the cabin."

The Alpine Fund is starting to receive more international attention, not only was there are article about the Alpine Fund in this month's Climbing magazine, UNICEF featured us in their curriculum handbook called 'Kids Inclusive'.

Those really are our kids from a mountain hike we held near Bishkek, they look happy and why not, being in the mountains is a new world, adventure, exploration, experience, learning, and a great time for all. The handbook is to be distributed world wide as a way to help kids include kids of other races, or handicapped, or without parents, or that for one of a thousand reasons might be different. A lot of people think that the kids we work with are bad kids, trouble. But we know better, that they just happened to have parents that or some reason can't look after them. But the kids are left out at times, they spend most time with themselves and have trouble communicating with other kids, their education is not as good, and they know that they are missing something that everybody else seems to have and not even notice, a family. The section about the Alpine Fund in the handbook encourages the reader to ask questions about who are these kids and why these kids look so happy.

The Alpine Fund welcomes Ilya Gusev to our staff. We first met Ilya over two years ago when he was a participant in our summer camp, then a volunteer on our mountain hikes, and now a valued staff member.

"I was a volunteer for Alpine Fund for almost two years and during this time I changed my views on life and on interpersonal relationship. Thanks to the Alpine Fund staff I became the way I am now. I entered university to study in the sociology department, took quite a few courses and participated in trainings. There were many mountain trips and I learned there everything that the mountain tourism trainer, Alexei Krasnobolodtsev taught. Communication with international volunteers expanded my perception of the world and I became interested in reading literature about other countries, people, about their ways of life and environment.

But the most interesting discovery for me, was that there were high mountains, which reach out to the sky with their cold and snowy peaks. They do not scare people but attract their attention. I observed how happy the children from Voenna Antonovka Children's Home became when future trips to the mountains were announced. The departure day we can see the eyes shining, smiles, and the impatience of children. Every child would be happy to have the opportunity to feel himself a man who is not afraid of cold winds, snow and dangers going up to subjugate the top of the mountains. Generally, children became very different in the mountains: it is too easy to communicate and work with them, they are absorbing all the information .

I want to take part in all this programs and leave a part of myself in all steps. I want to be like Aleksey, Farida, Elizaveta, Garth doing many useful thinks for this organization. Now I have the opportunity to work in two programs at the same time. It is difficult, of course, but it is always difficult to start.

How pleasant it is to participate in activities of such an organization as the Alpine Fund, they give opportunity to children to feel better about themselves and feel that they are more necessary in the society. Creation of the ABC led children to the fact that they can spend their weekends and breaks in the mountains being warm and cozy. And everyone feels himself as at home because the environment is created with this intention, where everyone knows that this is their home, mountain home, where they can build the plans for future tracks, move furniture, give their suggestions about improvement. It became more realistic to conduct training in mountain conditions, which is more interesting and entertaining for them now. Due to this fact, it is possible to approach their inner world, which is complicated and not stable. I can say that the idea of creating the ABC will bring to good results and I will be glad to participate in this process. And the most important about decisions on what to build and how: we have to take into consideration the opinions of the children, they like it very much."

Ilya Gusev

Marga

Difficult to believe that it is time already to write another newsletter, time flies here. Where to start this time?

Well the big news is that I finally decided to stay longer. Being as uncommitted as I normally am, it took me some time to reach this conclusion but apparently it was quite predictable for everyone else in the Alpine Fund. I like it here and enjoy the work; life is still full of surprises, the kids are just an amazing challenge and the autumn is one of the most stunning moments to be in this country. The whole city (Bishkek) and the mountains are covered in trees and vines displaying a great variety of colors, intense and dark reds, a wide range of browns, yellows, burgundy, etc. Wherever you look there are so many beautiful trees slowly loosing their leaves. And this contrast is even more awesome when in the background you have some impressive mountain peaks covered in snow.

The temperatures have dropped but the sky is bright blue and the sunshine warms you up rather nicely. Shame that we have to spend so much time working inside as buildings and apartments are cold at the moment. Bishkek central heating system gets turn on in November and warms up the whole city. Until then well we just have to wear more clothes to be inside the house that to be outdoors. But not long to go now

In August I went to Osh, Jalal-Abad and to Arslan-Bob to attend one of the summer camps organized by the Alpine Fund among other organizations. It was cool to spend some time with adolescents from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The integration among them was very good despite the language barriers (Uzbek, Russian, Kyrgyz and Kazak). Sometimes it looked like an UN meeting more than a summer camp as the seminars were translated into all these languages. It was a great opportunity for all these kids to become friends, to learn more about theirs respective cultures and also to enjoy some awesome treks in the Arslan-bob forest and the surrounding mountains.

Too bad I don’t have enough hours in a day to do everything I want to do. A few days ago I went to visit the kids in the CPC centre in Dordoi, it was great to see them all again specially because we remembered the wonderful way on how we ended the lessons: with a trip to the Alpine Fund Base camp this summer, enjoying nature walks, treks and all kind of games, it was a mini holiday for them as most have to work every single day in the bazaar. They asked me several times when I was going to go back and teach them again “please, please, please” – they beg me time and time again. I would love to do so but unfortunately at the moment it is just impossible. Maybe if we get more volunteers in the near future I would be able to do it.

At the moment everyone in the Alpine Fund office is busy and excited. The reason it is a very important one, next week we will celebrate the Alpine Fund 3^rd anniversary. We are organizing a party in collaboration with American Councils, probably a Halloween party, as the kids love to dress up.

We are all very content here as in the last 3 years much good has been done. Since then hundreds of disadvantaged kids have had the chance to enjoy and get closer to the mountains, to learn more about themselves and their possibilities and to look out for a better and brighter future. After all if you reach the peak of a mountain you can also reach the top of your dreams. Happy birthday Alpine Fund!!!

Writing Projects

The last couple of months have been very interesting and I have became involved in many different activities of the Alpine Fund, apart from teaching English, going to the mountains with the kids and working on the distribution of humanitarian aid, I also have created a website to inform about this humanitarian aid and it and also started writing a couple of grant projects to present to different institutions and organizations. My goal is to get funding for two infrastructure works.

The first is to repair the roof of the dacha recently bought by the Alpine Fund. We have been using it as “base camp” for weekend trips and treks and also as our mountain learning centre for disadvantaged kids. There they can relax, learn and enjoy themselves in an environment that is free, healthy and very different from where they are coming from. During the summer we had some kids mostly sleeping outside in tents and sleeping bags but as the winter is approaching it would be fantastic to have a new roof and some repair works done to improve the conditions there and also to be able to fit more kids into the dacha. This will allow us to increment the number of youths attending our programs.

The other project is not very related to the immediate mission or programs of the Alpine Fund but we all feel like we have to do something about this. The problem is the lack of water in the Uch-Kurgon Children’s Home, the oldest in Kyrgyzstan. They have been without access to safe drinking water for more than 10 years and even the water they used to get from the communal tap is gone now, as more and more people in the village have been using it. At the moment they just get a few drops a week if they are lucky because the children’s home is at the end of the pipe and located at a higher altitude than the village so most of the time the water pressure is so low that the water does not reach them. This affects not only their health but also their hygiene habits and the cleanliness of the place. At the moment they dedicate loads of efforts and money to get water from far away places, if we could managed to built a well and install a new water system (the old one got destroyed due to the lack of use) the living conditions of these kids could improved a lot. We became aware of this problem because Alpine Fund has a couple of programs there, one physical training and mountain expeditions for the all the kids and another, an arts program sponsoring art materials and classes for the kids that have found their artistic talents and want to develop them further.

Writing this project is not easy as I rely on many people sending the information I need and the concepts of “I will fax it to you tomorrow” or deadlines are very flexible here (more flexible than one could imagine!). I am very enthusiastic about it but recently I must confess I have been feeling equally frustrated. It is not a case of blaming particular individuals, more likely it is the mentality left after so many years of Soviet Union life, when things got fixed regularly and at the expense of the state; without them having to worry about money or needing to write extensive and relevant project proposals. Times had changed fast and many people here live in a kind of time bubble using the models, roles and expectations of a world that doesn’t exist any longer. These are the ones they have known for years and feel comfortable with so I can understand that changing them can be very difficult.

And never mind a little frustration, this is part of the experience of living here. One thing is for sure; when we finally achieve our goal and those kids have access to safe drinking water (and as much water as they need) I will be one of the happiest persons on earth.

As Farida is teaching also English at the V.A. Children’s Home, we have decided to have two classes, she teaches the older kids and I am in charge of the small ones. It is great fun but also loads of work to try to make the lessons interesting and I need to prepare many games and interactive activities for them. It was a great feeling to meet the kids again and to see that they are still remembering some of the things they learnt before the summer holidays and also to have more small students in the lessons. Last year, I was told a few times by the older kids that the small ones did not have enough capacity to learn English because they are “just too young”. It is kind of strange to hear this as normally for learning languages the younger the better as long as the kids want to but sadly this is the mentality of these children. Now I intend to make an example of my students so the other little ones can see them as an example that you do not have to limit your potentials. Hopefully they will learn to believe in their own possibilities.

The lessons have been going well, last week I go only a few kids because most of the kids from the children’s home have to go and harvest potatoes, it is the time of the year when one has to think about getting all the vegetables ready for the winter as in a few weeks they will become more and more rare until they disappear completely. Last Thursday we had a fun class, it was Erjan & Nurjan’s happy birthday, to celebrate that they are now 11 we had a mini party instead of a lesson.

Three times per week we have also English lesson at the Alpine Fund office because it is important for the Alpine Fund interns Maia and Yura to speak English and they are learning fast. Oksana, a girl from the VA Children’s Home and former Alpine Fund intern, is the perfect example for them. Her English is very now very good but she wants to improve it and comes for extra classes also 3 times per week.

Maya:

Hello again! I want to tell you a little about the last months here. In August, I traveled to Arlan-Bob with the rest of the Alpine Fund team to participate in two summer camps. There were two 10-day camps, each time we had 30 kids from different areas or Kyrgyzstan and Kazhastan. They were very active in all the activities we prepared for them and they liked a lot the seminars. At the beginning of each camp we divided the children in three groups of 10 and every day they had to prepare for the activities and competitions and all the teams wanted to be the number one of the day. Every group went with us to a trek in the mountains. We trained them on how to set up camp, tents and use the sleeping bags. Some of them never went camping before but they were really good and learned fast. When we arrived in the mountains they put up the tents without problems. We provided everything for those treks, sleeping bags, tents, food, sweets, drinks and many other things.

What about me? I learned many things during the seminars and also made many new friends. It was good to meet people from different places, speaking different languages and getting together helping each other and having fun. It was sad to say good-bye to my new friends and I had already written a letter to some of them, we want to keep in touch. But I have to say also that, after spending one month in the beautiful mountains far away from Bishkek, I was looking forward to be back in the city and to start my new life.

In September, I began my lessons in the technical school, I am studying accounting, which is quite difficult but I am doing well. I also started to be active in Alpine Fund coming every day to the office after technical school to learn English and other things. Also I have been to the dacha with the kids from the VA Children’s Home, I used to be one of them and now I have the wonderful opportunity to learn new things and became an example for them. We all enjoy this weekends in the dacha very much, it is a nice change from the normal daily routine. We do different things there, we walk in the beautiful mountains, we learn about the nature and environment, we cook different meals, we play many games and the last times we also collected many apples from the apple trees in the garden and put them away for the winter. We selected the best ones and stored them. The other apples were eaten there and the kids took some back to the children’s home when we left. We also ate many berries from the bushes that are everywhere. They were really tasty. I am responsible for the food and always organize the children in shifts so everyone helps to prepare the different meals. We also make shifts for doing the dishes afterwards and sometimes that is great fun.

In the first trip to the dacha a couple of kids created problems and Ilya had to talk to them. The other time everyone behaved very well and we all had a fantastic time. Now, we sleep inside the dacha because at the moment it is very cold to sleep outside. One of my favorite moments is in the evening after dinner, when we make a fire and we all sit around it. Every one participates, we tell stories, play different games, sing songs and tell jokes. I really enjoy entertaining the kids and organizing different games for them. We know each other very well because I lived in the Children’s Home before but there are also some new children that weren’t there before. Later on, when it is late already, we went inside the dacha and Ilya amused us with us some scary stories. Other kids also started making up stories after that we all had a good sleep.

I also like it very much when we reach the peaks of the mountains. It is a feeling that I cannot explain but up there everything is different and very beautiful. I just feel so good, like I have conquered it. No matter how difficult or how much effort we have to make we can always reach the top. That’s what our trainers always tell us and it is the truth.

It’s October in Bishkek and the leaves are falling, universities are open and cold blue days are back. People are canning vegetables, burning leaves and putting on coats. Prime late summer climbing in the Kyrgyz-Alatau is closing and the ice and ski season are on the way.

Summer and the tourists are gone - what tourists there were. A small but hardy surge was in transit back and forth taking on 7000m Khan Tengri near China. There was a handful of tour buses. We saw a thin infusion of “backpackers” in August walking down Chui, drinking coffee in Fatbov’s and gulping beer at Johnnie’s Golden Bull (Bishkek’s new live music pub). But for the most part Kyrgyzstan remains hidden away, a small Stan in the middle of the map. The Kyrgyzstani people continue waiting for their great economic hope – “tourism” – and the lucky travelers preferring to keep their stash undiscovered keep their secret.

The Alpine Fund, founded three years ago to promote better lives for local youth, began looking more seriously this summer at climbing, mountain and other tourism related services to support our operating costs. We spent much of the summer talking to the few tourists we could find and looking into providing guide and other services for destination tourists in the future.

The Alpine Fund holds a strategic location in the center of Bishkek, and now a cabin at the entrance at Ala-Archa. What we need, however, are volunteers, and we will plan to begin an active campaign to recruit specialized volunteers, particularly those with guide and business experience after New Years’. Volunteering for a few months in Kyrgyzstan is an intense, life changing experience, and we hope to place several professionally-oriented volunteers beginning this winter.

Please stay tuned to much information about volunteering and mega-development on the www.alpinefund.org website as we approach the holiday season. Meanwhile email ryan@alipnefund.org for more information about volunteering.

I met Marga by chance at the airport when she came from Spain to work for Alpine Fund. This was my first meeting with a volunteer in my life. Later on, we kept in touch and became friends and I met other people working in Alpine Fund. I was amazed on how some people do volunteer work helping disadvantaged children in a foreign country and all that without a salary.

On my first day in Alpine Fund we were carrying boxes of humanitarian aid. The group of volunteers was quite international: Russian, Kyrgyz, Danish, Spanish and American, but we all had one thing in common: the desire to help children. It was a great feeling. This day I understood that if you can be useful to other people you have to do it. Maybe, this is just a little help, but you have to do what you can. If everybody thought this way the world would became a better place. I’m very happy to be working with the Alpine Found team as a volunteer. Not only it is an extremely important mission we’re engaged in, but also it’s a great experience for me to be working in a humanitarian organization, the experience of a lifetime, actually.

At the moment I am working on the translation of the budget and other information for a very interesting project, to build a new water system in the Uch-Kurgan Children’s Home. They haven’t had running or potable water at the moment as the well they had before dried up many years ago. If we managed to get funds and make this project a reality the health and living standards of more than one hundred and twenty Kyrgyz children that live there will improve significantly. Needless to say, we will try our best.

And unfortunately we have not heard much from Patricia after she went down to the deep south of Kyrgyzstan. Patricia arrived at the end of summer having just finished her university studies in Californian. She is from Austria and had dreamed of coming to a mountainous country where she could volunteer to help kids and spend time in the mountains. The Alpine Fund was a perfect fit. After a few weeks in Bishkek she wanted to get a more Central Asia feel so we sent her to live at the Uch Korgon Children's home in the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan. She has called a few times and said how she loves it, does not want to leave, and is having the best time ever with the kids, but she has taken the time out to write, so until then we will just assume that all is well

Matt and Kira are two volunteers that teach in Bishkek, Kira wants to teach ecology and sociology at the children's home while Matt hopes to help out in the office.

Happy Birthday to the Alpine Fund. Three years ago this week the Alpine Fund started work in Kyrgyzstan, how fast it past by, and how much happened. Most important is that we have continually been there working with kids. They know us now, they know we are not leaving and that we will be there tomorrow. Building this relationship took time, but there is no easy or short term solution, so it is a long term view we must have.

On this third anniversary I am not going to be able to be there. I recently have moved one country to the West and now live and work in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. I am now director of Relief International/Schools Online where I am responsible for setting up internet in 20 schools around the country. But life at the Alpine Fund goes on.

For me the most important sign of progress is that all of what you read above happened without me there. Although I started the Alpine Fund it was always my dream that it would someday be bigger than me; that although I do think of it as my child, the child is three and is running up to the mountains.

It all comes down to first a great staff. Elizaveta is the office manager/accountant that has been there from the beginning, and Alexai was the first guide we hired and still goes to the children's home every week. Their dedication is what has kept the Alpine Fund on course. Along the way there have been part time staff that have left there mark on the organization, as well as on the kids. Most recently we hired Ilya, who managed to keep his head high and mind sharp during time he spent in a youth prison. He came to our summer camp as part of a program that brought released kids to the mountains, and he has been with us ever since now as paid staff.

In addition to the staff we have a constant flow of volunteers, first was Danfung from Syracuse, who spent a summer with the kids at a mountain camp, then Kirsten from Denmark and after her Rasmus from Denmark as well, we were joined by Erling from Norway who researched his thesis as he worked with the kids and entitled it "The Alpine Fund, a youth organization with a vision and the mountains as an ally." Ryan came on and took on the Alpine Fund as a project with his Peace Corps mission, he brought the website to a new level and works to make the whole organization more sustainable. Most recently we have had Marga, who in the past few months has breathed new life into the Alpine Fund, she has been a tireless teacher, office worker and friend to all. Patricia is down in Batken, living with the children at a Children's home and new volunteers are joining us.

And not all of what we do happens in Kyrgyzstan. The Alpine Fund is registered in the US as a 501(c)3 charity organization. As I seem to spend most of my life in Central Asia all the state side administrative details is done volunteers as well. Dean Hawthorne and Lisa Himmilstrup, the Executive Board of the Alpine Fund have always been there. And I have to say thanks to my parents, who both financially and through their moral support have made this all possible. Without the help of my family and friends this whole idea would never have made it this far.

And of course we would not have made it three years without our sponsors. It was the US State Department that first gave me a research grant to study the status of youth mountaineering in Kyrgyzstan, then UNICEF gave us a grant to get started. Most important have been all the personal donations we have received along the way, some from people that know us, others that anonymously have decided to help, but all I believe have a common trust that what we do is important and that they can trust us with their money. This trust is something we do not take lightly. I do not want the Alpine Update to be a fundraising tool, but I will say thank you to all that have donated and ask a favor to those out there that could help. Every little bit helps, we have an annual budget of about $20,000, much of this is raised through donations, some through guiding and gear rental, and the rest I have contributed.

What will come next? We want to see our Alpine Base Camp expand by raising capital investment to buy more mountain cabins, to build our endowment fund bigger, we want to push more the business side of the Alpine Fund and to have more tourists use us for guiding. This business gives us our own income, and gives our kids a place to work. We want to expand our volunteer program, and hopefully find ways to support them so our volunteers do not have to pay all of their own expenses. And most importantly we want to keep going to the mountains with kids, because in the end that is what it is all about.

The Alpine Fund's Mission

To get kids into the mountains

.....or in more words......

To provide vulnerable youths that need an extra chance in life experience and education in the mountains where they can learn about the natural environment as they learn more about themselves and their broader opportunities.