In Q4 of this year, 20 K2 employees from across the globe will be taking part in the company’s main charitable initiative for 2023, an expedition and a volunteering programme in Nepal.
On the 26th November, the project team will fly out to Nepal where they will split into two groups. The first group will embark on the Everest Base Camp Trek, whilst the second group will head into remote villages surrounding Pokhara, a city in central Nepal, to help refurbish local schools. Each project will challenge the K2 employees taking part in it. The trek will be physically demanding, testing employees’ physical and mental resilience in the face of sub-zero temperatures, high altitudes and hostile terrain. Though less physically strenuous, the volunteering programme will require employees to integrate swiftly within a local community, negotiating the language barrier and the differences in culture so that they are able to work in partnership with the residents.
The aim of the Nepal Project is to raise money for the K2 Foundation, a charity which was established at the beginning of 2023 and which supports the future of children around the world, particularly within the regions that K2 operates. The idea came from K2’s CEO, Nick Plummer, who believes that each and every business has a responsibility to give back to, protect and enrich their local communities. The Foundation straddles People & Culture and Sustainability, two of the six pillars of Kinetic, K2’s five-year strategic business plan (2022-2026). Charitable work is integral to K2’s culture, and taking care of the communities within which we do business plays a key role in protecting the future of the global mobility industry as a whole.
Each member of the project team will reach out to their network to ask them to sponsor their participation in the project; as a company, K2 will also be asking our partners for sponsorship. The money that we raise will be channelled through the K2 Foundation and used to support education in a favela in São Paulo, Brazil, the location of one of K2’s nine offices. We have partnered with Associação Semeando Amor, a charity in São Paulo which supports local children who are growing up in the favelas. The charity runs a school for some of these children, but as a result of time passing and the school community growing, the school building is no longer fit for purpose. Through its Foundation, K2 will rebuild the school so that it can continue to provide a safe, educational space for the current and future generations of local children.
As the Nepal Project progresses and plans for the new school take shape, K2 will share updates via the Insights page on its website and its three social media channels – LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. With the selection of the project team and the launch of the K2 Foundation, our epic CSR journey for 2023 has officially begun!
Visit our K2 Foundation website here to find out more.
