Kilimanjaro - Machame Climb

In 1990, we formed a company in Kenya to enable us to employ Kenyan staff and to move much of our operations to Africa. We built a workshop in Nairobi and trained local staff to build and maintain our vehicles, and at the same time took on Kenyan and other African nationals to lead our tours. Over the years we have brought a number of these staff to UK for training. We have introduced health and medical cover to our Nairobi staff. By 2000 had succeeded in completely handing over the operation to Kenyan staff.

On Kilimanjaro, we insist that porters carry no more than the maximum (20Kg) recommended load, and we also make sure they have sufficient warm gear to climb comfortably. Back off the mountain, we cover their medical expenses and ensure an equitable distribution of the much sought after jobs. Although we attempt to keep the price of our climbs down for the customers, we don't feel it would be fair to do so at the expense of the local workforce. We also lead the battle to stop the use of firewood on the mountain as the lower slopes were rapidly being denuded of trees. Paraffin is now standard and gas is supplied to the mountain huts for cooking.

We have been involved in the Kilimanjaro Village Education Project for some years, and this year are aiming to raise £35,000 to build a computer centre so that locals can aspire to real jobs and not just portering.

We were one of the first tour operators to have their UK offices 'climate balanced' with an independent audit carried out by C-Level (www.clevel.co.uk). We are taking steps to reduce waste and power in the office, and are compensating for the CO2 we do produce by planting trees in their Uganda forests. We are already planting one tree per pax trip week for all vehicle based tours in Africa, are offering clients the chance to compensate for their flights by linking them to our calculator. This will indicate the carbon footprint of their flight and the cost of compensating through tree planting.