MEND OUR MOUNTAINS 2
CHRIS BONINGTON, “When the clag is down and darkness is
R Scafell Pike and the Western Fells.
approaching, a path can feel like the only tether to the rest of humanity.”
Last year the BMC and its charity, the BMC Access and Conservation Trust, attempted something new: a crowdfunding drive in collaboration with eight national park authorities which aimed to raise £100,000 for mountain paths across England and Wales, including the highest mountains of both countries.
BEFORE AFTER
It was an ambitious, untested idea, but BMC members and the wider outdoor public stepped up to the challenge. Your pledges got us to the target and then some, hitting £103,832, and the campaign made national news headlines, appearing on BBC Breakfast News, the leader pages of the Times and Radio 4’s Today among many others, spotlighting the challenges of looking after our mountain landscapes. It was later voted Campaign of the Year in the annual awards run by The Great Outdoors magazine. Extra donations and match-funding have subsequently added to the totals given to the projects by the initial crowdfunding effort, pushing the overall ‘worth’ of the campaign well past the £150,000 mark. Now we are about to launch the sequel. The Mend Our Mountains:
Make One Million appeal commences this autumn. As the title implies, we have raised our sights considerably higher this time around – ten times higher. We want to help raise £1 million in total, split between 17 projects of varying scales across Britain and encompassing the UK’s entire family of 15 national parks, including those in Scotland. The appeal will run over a whole year, and will employ a wide range of fundraising techniques in addition to crowdfunding.
While we want to encourage recreational users to chip in in the same way as last time, we also plan to draw in money and support from people and organisations with a few more bob to spare than your average punter – large businesses, corporate donors and charitable trusts, for example. And rather than being a solely BMC-led affair, we will be working much more collaboratively with the national park authorities and other partners whose projects are in need of help.
The best way to think about it is a multitude of different campaigns under a single banner, coordinated by the BMC but run as a team effort on a national scale to make a huge positive difference to the landscapes we all care about.
40 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
MOUNTAINEER “Footpath work is essential to look after our mountains. Without it many routes in places like the Lake District would become huge scars or rivers of scree. Mend Our Mountains is an innovative way for walkers and climbers to make a collective contribution to preserve the beauty of the fells at a challenging time. I fully support it and would encourage everyone to donate.”
MARY-ANN OCHOTA,
JOURNALIST AND BMC AMBASSADOR “Our most iconic hills take a real bashing from tens of thousands of pairs of feet a year. It’s fantastic that so many of us are out there enjoying the uplands, but we can’t take them for granted. It’s not just about giving some cash to charity, it’s about working together to look after the places we love for generations to come.”
DONATE NOW
www.mendmountains.thebmc.co.uk
PHOTO: TERRY ABRAHAM.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
