“Hey! The outdoors is good for the mind, body and soul. There are amazing people doing incredible things to help others benefit from this and we’re super proud to be able to support them”
Alpkit Foundation Trustees
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Over £1,000,000 donated
More than 3,000 projects
Welcome to our annual review, one which also marks our 10 year anniversary. It really is quite something. We’ve now had over 10,000 applications and now regularly review 3-400 hundred each meeting. It really highlights the level of importance we are putting on outdoor experiences. But there is always more to do. So please enjoy snippets of some of the recent support we’ve been able to offer and be sure to follow us as we celebrate the impact being made.
This is what NOW This is what
meeta trustee wedo
Alpkit only exists because of our wild places and the people that make them. This is why the Alpkit Foundation was set up, because access to nature should be more than a nice-to-have. Our small awards go to support direct action, where a positive difference can be made to help people get outdoors and experience the benefits of time spent outside.
THeydo
“One real positive aspect to the Alpkit Foundation is that the process allows community groups that would ordinarily fall outside of other funding body requirements, to access grants. This can really help open up opportunities to connect more with the outdoors as well as other communities and groups. Something that we’ve seen through work at Peak District Mosaic and into our Championing National Parks for Everyone project.” Yvonne Witter MBE. Peak District Mosaic
“ My therapy - climbing - provides a close connection to the outdoor environment and a community of likeminded individuals. We share a love of challenges in the outdoors which goes hand in hand with a raised awareness of environmental vulnerability in these times of severe ecological pressure. Hopefully we all encourage custodianship of our precious environments, and not simply its use as a commodity for our own ends.”
ADGE LAST
“Adge joined us right at the start and is passionate about the outdoors. He still remembers clearly the first time he went climbing as a young teenager with friends on a crag near Edinburgh - a mere 50+ years ago.
“I can’t recall anything else I did that year with such clarity - some of the climbs I did, the shoes I had on my feet, and the total immersion in the challenge. Climbing instantly became a huge part of my life, and has influenced all aspects of my life choices ever since.”
Adge’s experience is a real strength to the Alpkit Foundation, having been able to share the power of his own experiences working directly with young people in schools, youth services and outdoor centres, and more often through the delivery of training courses to new leaders in a range of outdoor activities and contexts.
“When the opportunity to become a Trustee arose I saw it as a privilege to be able to help. Scanning through reports we receive back from funded projects it’s clear tha Alpkit Foundation support can help young people have potentially life changing experiences in the outdoors. Whether it is a one-off, or assistance for a more long term sustainable scheme, I’m proud to be involved.”
Pete Col Elly David Naomi
Abby Adge Helen Nick Kenny Ross
people & projects Snippets of Those Amazing
Future Leaders
Supporting young people to help shape a positive and lasting impact on our National Parks.
The Campaign for National Parks - New Perspectives: Future Leaders Course is developed for and by young people passionate about making a positive difference for National Parks, nature and people. Katrina Sandiford told us about the course.
“With support from leaders across the nature and landscapes sector, our course aims to inspire participants to become the future leaders and change-makers we need to safeguard the future of our National Parks.”
An award of £250 was put towards equipment to support their 2025 course.
Walk in the PArks
Supporting National Parks with £10,000 as Jen Lowthrop walks 1000 miles through 10 of them!
We really wanted to highlight the important work going on within National Parks alongside Jen as she raised money for the Peak District NP.
“I want to do more for our national parks, especially around access. I want more people, especially young people to experience the joys of connecting to nature”
We were so pleased to put £10k towards 20 projects across all those 10 national parks to support the vital role they play to introduce and teach the importance and benefits of time outdoors.
A group from Black Girls Hike enjoy a mountaineering skills weekend through the Womens Alpine Adventure Club
CAVING FOR SCOUTS
Helping provide better equipment opens up more challenging opportunities for scouts.
James from 1st Keynsham Scout Group was looking to enhance their current level of caving activities for those in the local Scout District and beyond.
“Better caving suits have allowed us to run more challenging trips in wet caves, to develop teamwork, self confidence, self reliance and a better understanding of the environment and ecology of caves.”
It’s great to see the impact these subterranean adventures are having and that it is far reaching for scouts from London, Weymouth, Salisbury as well as across Bristol and their local area.
Extreme Dentistry
Support with emergency shelters to help provide hands on training when faced with facial trauma in extreme environments.
Burjor Langdana is from Wilderness Dentistry and runs workshops around the primary management of facial trauma, particularly in remote and extreme environments. This is aimed at Search and Rescue, Mountain Cave Rescue, Offshore, SOF and for a Masters program with World Extreme Medicine.
“It’s important we train hands on. We train with the real stuff in real time... So that when faced with an actual incident, their formative response will benefit the casualty, improving the outcome.”
INCrease REPRESENTATIon
Women’s Alpine Adventure Club addressed diversity within their club and help broaden representation within the mountains.
There’s a real power in community based ventures to support growth and build both skills and confidence.
“We have been running UK Skills weekends and Alpine Meets for around 4 years now, but we have noticed that our community isn’t very diverse and we’re really keen to do something about this.
We wanted run a bespoke weekend as the first steps at promoting inclusion and offering opportunities, with the hope that they in turn will influence many others in their own communities. “
To kick things off, they linked in with Black Girls Hike to run a weekend with two Intro to Mountaineering courses. We were delighted to provide a grant of £500 to help cover accommodation costs.
ONE IN A MILLION
Supporting youngsters to participate in outdoor activities and create lasting positive impacts on their lives.
One in A Million helps children from severely disadvantaged communities around the Bradford district. To give them a safe place to go, to discover their talents and passions and equip them to become life and work ready.
A grant of £240 was used to help towards transport on their annual trip to a local activity centre
“Lots of bravery, courage, and resilience were shown by the young people. What a brilliant day for all the staff and children involved.”
These experiences go beyond a single day—they empower young people to push boundaries, believe in themselves, and develop skills that will benefit them long after the trip has ended.
Green Schools
Outdoor learning sessions for 8 urban schools help young people connect with nature and inspire them to take positive action in response to climate issues.
Green Schools Project helps schools transform the way they respond to the climate and nature crisis, supporting them deliver pupil sessions during curriculum time, teacher training and involvment of the local community.
“Delivering outdoor learning sessions as part of our Zero Carbon Schools programme, gives pupils this opportunity to connect with nature and enjoy and explore the natural spaces around them.”
We were delighted to be able to fund 8 of these outdoor sessions at schools in urbanised and deprived areas
Women on WHEELS
Opening up opportunities for women to gain confidence and skills to take on long distance cycling through their cycle tour programme.
Women on Wheels is a Glasgow based women-led cycling group empowering women of all backgrounds and abilities to become confident cyclists and help open up the posibilities this can bring.
By helping towards funding their cycle touring programme it helped with their aim to ensure financial constraints don’t stop women from taking part and that the initiative can continue to open doors for women to experience the joy of cycle touring
“Our tours aim to support, encourage and inspire women to build confidence in thier cycling/touring skills and buld a community so they can ultimately get out independently from us.”
Read more: alpkit.com/blogs/foundation
Alpkit stores remain commited to supporting their local mountain / search and rescue teams to help look after those out enjoying these amazing locations. While the alpkit team continue to volunteer for their personal passions, supported by the Alpkit Foundation.
The Quick Financy Bit
Annual Return for year ending Oct 2024
> Alpkit Limited donates 1% of its sales plus proceeds from events such as the Big Shakeout. Alpkit Limited commits to donate at least 10% of its annual profit to the Foundation each year.
> 1,783 applications in the year to 31 October 2024.
542 projects supported with over £110,000.
> This year the Alpkit Foundation received donations of over £151,000
> The net surplus in the year of £1,449 is added to unrestricted reserves. Unrestricted reserves total for future benefit were £61,716.
> Continued support of Alpkit’s Continuum. Including 0.5 tonne of wetusit and neoprene recycled, another 950 kg of down products to ReDown and c. 3.3 tonnes of outdoor kit back out being used.
> Over £8,000 raised over Bank Holiday for the Mountain / Search and Rescue teams local to all our stores.
> £10,000 support to National Parks, accross 20 projects.
> Over £5,400 matching staff fundraising and volunteering efforts.
Over 20 tonnes and counting
Our Continuum project is supported by the Alpkit Foundation. In the last few years we’ve now sent over 3 tonnes of end-oflife wetsuits to Circular Flow for recycling, 3 tonnes of down to RE:Down, in the region of 1000 sleeping bags to homeless support including SheltersuitUK. This year we sent 3 pallets of mixed camping and clothing to Highlands for Ukraine, while we of course continue to support communities and groups around the UK, helping others access the outdoors and give old kit a continued life. Oh and keep an eye out for our Kitswaps, they have become hugely popular at events around the country!
> Continued commitment to the Association of Mountaineering Instructors and their charity tender fund, along with Lindley Educational Trust both recieving £2,500 to reactively utilise and issue smaller grants to help increase diversity and access in the outdoors.
* Current UPDATE
2025 has seen us hit the amazing one million pounds in support to over 3000 projects. We also recieved an incredible £50,000 donation from Challenge Cancer through Adventure to support our work.
NOW Over £1million &3000 projects!
The YoungWilders
Youth led action to address the biodiversity crisis withing the UK. Youngwilders make sure young people are right at the centre to build the next generation of environmental stewards.
Biodiversity within the UK is drastically declining, highlighted as having some of the lowest in Europe and the Western world. It’s organisations such as Youngwilders that look to take this moment seriously and to make sure young people are at the centre.
It is with a positive outlook and boundless optimism that they envisage possibilities of an exhilarating explosion of life and the largest nature engagement opportunity this country has ever seen. Co-director Noah Bennett first contacted the Alpkit Foundation a couple of years ago looking for support early in their journey.
“We wanted to build an organisation that we wished existed when we first became engaged in environmental issues.
Now, as a growing team with huge ambitions for youth-led nature recovery we’ve established 188.5 acres of new nature recovery projects across ten active sites in England and Wales.”
Everything is united by the fact that projects are designed to encompass substantial youth involvement, with all project interventions conceived, designed and delivered by young people.
The Alpkit Foundation has been honoured to add a little support over the years, a re-wilding project at their Maple Farm site in Sussex and more recently to their Youth Rewilding Summit, helping to engaging with groups underrepresented in the environmental sector
“Over 1000 young people have taken part in our in-person
events, which focus on ecological learning, community-building, and joy. Wild Stewards, place young people in paid, decisionmaking roles on sites, and Wayfinders, are a series of field skills weekends building peer-topeer learning in conservation.
We’re now entering a new phase: scaling nationally to ensure every young person in England and Wales is within an hour of a youthled nature recovery project.”
It’s a powerful way to really engage and build that love for our environment. Demonstrating how giving direct, practical hands on experience can be so impactful in deepening the connection with nature and empowering young people to make change happen. www.youngwilders.org
Ashton youth leaders summit Toubkal, Morocco
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THANK YOU
Wow 10 years! We can’t emphasise enough just how blown away we are by the amazing work we’ve had the honour to support during this time. And there is so much happening out there. We are really proud and humbled to have been able to support some truly incredible people and the impact they make is off the scale. But we continue to face challenges, whether it’s around access, inclusion, a lack of diversity, simple education or simply distraction. So while we are excited by what’s happened, we are more excited about what the next ten years will bring.
Over at Alpkit in our recent sustainability report we write about how ‘We’re all born outdoor enthusiasts. Then Modern Life beats it out of us.’ This is something that takes constant work to address as that ‘modern life’ seemingly brings greater disconnect from both far off wilder places, as well as those surprisingly close natural spaces that many still struggle to access.
For lots of us it can be a gradual process, switched off by many of life’s distractions, but some never get the chance in the first place, whether through poor access, cultural or societal circumstance and opportunities. This is where the true strength of communities, groups and passionate activists come to play in order to support, encourage, inspire and drive for change. It is here where we feel our smaller awards can continue to make a real difference, supporting through lots of small steps that help towards those big strides to making, and keeping, the outdoors an important place in everyone’s lives for all those positive reasons.
So, on behalf of all the trustees I have the real honour of saying a heartfelt thank you to all those people involved in projects we’ve had links with over the years, and to all of you who have helped in your own way to support the Alpkit Foundation. We’re excited for you to join us as we look to the next 10 years, to celebrate the power of the outdoors, cherish those wilder places and to help each other build and gain wondrous, life changing moments. We all know it makes sense.
Go nice places, do good things. Now that’s a joy everyone should be able to share.
DONATE
We couldn’t have done any of this without you. Every time you treat yourself to some Alpkit gear for your next adventure you’ll know it’s doing something good for others.
You can also donate directly via tha Alpkit Foundation website, through PayPal Giving Fund, or maybe even choose us as your next fundraiser through GoFundMe
If you are a 1% For the Planet organisation you can choose the Alpkit Foundation as your Non-Profit partner.
APPLY
If you have a project that you feel we can help with to combat barriers accessing and helping others benefit from time spent outdoors then here we are!
We look to keep the application process as simple as possible. We meet every 2 months so if possible please allow plenty of time before the start of your project.
Apply online at alpkit.com/foundation and click on the application link.