How are these three things related and why am I writing about it?
As many of you close to me know, I am preparing to leave for Kathmandu in a little less than 2 months for my next climbing endeavor: Scaling Chomolungma (Tibetan), also known to westerners as Everest. Chomolungma means "Goddess Mother of Mountains." It is a beautiful mountain range with lots of magic and many historical places including the Khumbu Icefall, the South col, the Geneva spur, the Yellow bands and the Balcony. These are all places that many of us climbers have read about in so many books and heard about in countless exploration stories.
While training for this adventure, I am also taking a break from my corporate career for a few months. With the time this grants me, I am able to spend my days mentoring former colleagues, advising a couple startups, and volunteering for a non-profit organization. The organization I have spent my time, energy and experience on is Splash.org. Splash is an incredible organization that has a dynamic and passionately altruistic team. Their mission is to bring clean water and sanitation to students in many of the most underprivileged urban areas in less developed countries. Today, they serve over 403,365 kids, 1,147 orphanages, 16 hospitals, 476 schools, and 20 shelters across 8 countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia China, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam). They are well on their way to reaching and serving over a million school kids by 2020.
I am helping Splash scale their data infrastructure in order to support the growth of their operation as they significantly increase the number of schools they plan to reach over the next few years. I am doing this by helping to improve their data collection on sites, tracking and reporting capability back in the US. This is an incredibly exciting project with a real impact on hundreds of thousands of kids daily.
While in Kathmandu, I will have the privilege to visit the Splash team locally as well as some schools they support there. I will be raising funds before and during my journey to Kathmandu. My objective is to raise the amount of money needed to cover the cost of providing clean water to all the schools, orphanages and hospitals in Nepal for a full year. This entails about $250 per school/orphanage/Hospital/shelters per year. $250 provides clean water to about 400 kids for a full year. My aim is to raise $62,000 to cover all 251 institutions and all 101,149 kids for an entire year. Will you help me reach that goal?
Whether you can provide clean water to a school for a month ($20), two months ($40), 6 months ($125), a full year ($250), 2 schools ($500), 4 schools ($1000) or more, a positive impact will be felt on a significant number of kids, improving their personal sanitation, their health, and thus, their learning. When student are not sick and are able to attend school reliably, they can grow a career and that contributes to the overall economic growth of each country and help lift these country out of poverty.
You can donate by accessing our Everest Climb for Clean water page here. Thank you for anything you can donate. Don't forget to use your company's matching program to double your donation. And since I will also match your donation, it will quadruple your gift. Don't forget to mention "Thierry's Climb For Clean Water" in the comment section of your employer's matching page.
As I continue my preparation for this Everest climb, and as I have traditionally done with my other climbs, I will write a number of micro-blogs (I'm shooting for weekly before I take off) covering the many questions that I know run through the minds of many. This time, however, I will not only cover my expedition up Everest but experiences I have with Splash.org as well.
Here are some topics I will write about in upcoming blog posts:
· Why climb Everest?
· How do you train for such a climb?
· What are the requirement to join such an expedition?
· Who do I go with and why?
· Is it dangerous?
· How do you actually climb a mountain like Everest and why does it take over 2 months?
· What type of gear is needed and what is each used for?
· Sherpas? Locals? Is commercial climbing a good or a bad thing for Nepalese/Tibetans?
· Isn’t the mountain getting super dirty and isn’t commercial climbing becoming a bad thing for the earth?
· What then? What happens after Everest?
Also:
· How does Splash work?
· How can they provide the same US commercial grade water quality in poor countries?
· How do they choose which urban areas to cover?
· How do they work on the ground?
· How do they know whether habits and behaviors are changing regarding sanitation and health?
· What have I personally learned working with the Splash team?
I hope you will enjoy these posts and that you will learn some interesting facts along the way. Thank you for helping me reach my fundraising goals and helping improve the life of these Nepalese kids. Don't hesitate to spread the word with your social and professional networks. And feel free to post comments or suggest any additional questions you'd like me to cover in subsequent posts.
