About Moving Mountains

Founder Gavin Bate has been visiting and living in Kenya and Nepal for the past 16 years. He started working with street children, eventually raising money on a personal level for the education of around 30 kids back in 1991. This swelled to over 1000 off the streets and back . in school over a period of years.

Raising money for this has been hard and Gavin does this mostly through talks, lectures, and personal fundraising from his own expeditions climbing the big mountains of the world. This includes three expeditions on Everest, and in 2007, a fourth.

In 2001 he formalised this into a charity called Moving Mountains which now has 6 Trustees and an approximate expenditure per annum of £100,000.00.

 

In 2005 he started an NGO in Kenya, also called Moving Mountains, to carry out the operational side of the work of the Trust. This NGO has three Trustees, all of whom were once street children. Peter and Kelly (pictured left with Gavin) became the first Kenyans to climb Kilimanjaro by the Western Breach in 2005.

 

In 2006 the Trust and the NGO in Kenya looks after hundreds of street children, dozens of families and runs several feeding programmes around the country. It has built two large orphanages, and renovated many clinics, hospitals, schools and rescue centres.

It has built a hydro-electric plant in Nepal, a monastery and assisted with a hospital, schools and the education of children in Kathmandu.

 

 

In Niger it has assisted with the renovation and provision of medical supplies for several hospitals in Bilma and Dirkou and will run a medical aid expedition to the Sahara soon.

 

Adventure Alternative, Gavin's company, successfully supports the administrative overheads of the charity and offers many trips to people wishing to donate their time to the needs of street kids, schools and hospitals through a vibrant gap year and volunteer scheme. Every year the Africamp Expedition for example brings up to 100 young people to Kenya to carry out a number of relevant and important projects.

Gavin has built an unusual charity in Moving Mountains, in that it works with existing systems in Kenya and Nepal which are understood and fit into the needs of the society and ultimately allows the people to become the architects of their own success. This has meant delegating responsibility to local committees and using the Kenyan NGO to assist with this.

Moving Mountains now employs people who have finished their education, and has created Work Teams in different areas of need, such as School Rehabilitation Work Teams, Neighbourhood Watch Teams, Environmental Teams and even Football Teams in the hugely successful Black Cats which competes at a national level. The emphasis has been on working with a system to repair the broken links and create productive members of society

Gavin also meets with the families of the children and tries to ensure that the family is able to cope with the upkeep of their child at school by creating employment schemes, giving business loans and assisting with house rents and food bills. The onus is then on the mothers to ensure the child goes to school and does his or her homework. Each child is nurtured with an emphasis on helping him or her to really achieve their dreams and ambitions in life, and to be allowed to be kids in a world where too often they are treated as animals.

The schools which actively accept street kids have an added incentive because of the rehabilitation projects offered to them, such as renovation, maintenance, provision of western volunteer teachers and providing facilities such as kitchens.

In Nepal the story is very similar. The charity has worked within the unique system that exists in the Himalayas, thanks to the years of experience Gavin has had climbing and living there, and has built schools, a monastery and a large hydro electric plant which has now changed the socio-economic landscape of the region and brought prosperity.

Gavin has dedicated his life to using his trips up Everest and many other mountains, plus using the resources of his company, and all his experience in the developing world in which he has been travelling all his life and living amongst the people, to try and do something meaningful and relevant. It is possible to help.

Visit the dedicated Moving Mountains website - www.movingmountains.org.uk