The Sherpa people of Nepal are excellent porters and guides on mountain-climbing and trekking expeditions. They take great pride in their mountaineering heritage, but unfortunately many of them have very poor shoes to walk in. Recently we sponsored an air freight shipment for Haglöfs who supplied the Sherpas with 150 pairs of boots.
Supplying the Sherpas in Nepal with boots
Haglöfs has together with adventurer Ola Skinnarmo gone into a project in order to supply the Sherpas in Nepal with boots. These boots are made for rocky environments where traction and durability are critical. This is an optimal choice as the Sherpas help the Himalaya expeditions to carry supplies, while at the same time serving as guides.
The sherpas are tough. One of the Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Mr Apa Sherpa, also called “Super Sherpa”, beat his own world record once again on the 11th of May 2011, when he successfully reached the top of Mount Everest for the 21st time! This is very impressing!
But, if you look at the pictures you will see that some of the Sherpas are just wearing plane flip-flops. Sadly, this is not unusual and one can only imagine how cold it must be. As their working conditions are really tough, proper footwear should be a basic, basal thing in this cold environment.
We are not only a good logistics provider, but a socially responsible company
It goes without saying that it feels really good that we are able to contribute to supporting the Sherpa people. The Sherpas help visitors reach their destination, climbing the mountains, taking the lead, carrying all the equipment – not too dissimilar to how we make sure everything is set to get our customer’s shipments to their target destination. We are a business driven company, here to make money, but we are also obliged to help people that work really hard, but do not have the same possibilities that we have.
I am grateful that we got the opportunity to support this project and happy to do it together with Haglöfs. It gave us the chance to show that we are not only a good logistics provider, but also try to be a socially responsible company. By sponsoring the air freight shipment from Sweden to Nepal we take responsibility for the world we live in.
The air freight shipment was successfully delivered to the Sherpa people
To sum it all up, the transport went really well. After some intensive mail correspondence with our agent in Nepal, the shipment was released from customs and could be delivered to the very happy and grateful Sherpa people – We guess the pictures say it all!
To everyone involved, we would like to say – thank you!
