April 27th, 2021
Greetings from the SMA team. First of all, we would like to express our appreciation to all of our generous supporters. We are very excited to share with you some progress we made so far on the SMA relief project.
Nepal is one of the poor countries in Southeast Asia, and the government is not in the position to provide immediate support to the public. This small landlocked country’s mainstream economy is tourism. Due to COVID 19, the tourism industry is entirely shut down, and many families are out of work and struggling to survive in this challenging situation.
Over the decade, Sherpa Mountain Adventures has been dedicated to creating economic opportunities through tourism to make a sustainable community for our Nepalese friends. We also conduct an annual medical mission to provide free health care for those in desperate need of support. Unfortunately, we were forced to cancel all our 2020 trips because of this uncertain situation. Which directly caused an economic burden to many of our staff members.
SMA decided to set up fundraising through HDF and raised $6400 from our clients and generous donors for this relief project. Initially, we planned to complete this project end of fall 2020, but due to raising Covid 19 cases in the country, we had to postpone this project until the Spring of 2021. This project is designed to create various jobs through community service works such as building and maintaining trekking trails, cleaning up trash to preserve the environment, general health education, and bringing awareness about climate changes.
On April 15, 2021, The SMA Sherpa guides, staff members headed to the Solukhumbu region, located south of Mount Everest. The team purchased foods, equipment, gears, etc. and loaded on Jeep, and droved about 12 hours to Taksindu La. From there, the team carried all the supplies on their back and trekked about 2 hours to Kerung Pati. They Built shelter to live there during our project work.
We are using 100% of the fund you generously donated for this project. We currently hired nine people to do this physical job in this mountain area. We used your donation to pay their wages, medical insurance, food, all accommodation, transportation, equipment, personal gear, etc. We believe that this project immensely supports our team, and the fund is also distributed among other industries that are struggling during this challenging time. We have enough funding to do this project for 30 days, and We would like to extend this time if we can get more funding. You can still donate to us through the link below. We will share more updates with you throughout this project. Thank you so much for your continued support, and we greatly appreciate it. Namaste!
SMA Team
