Kul Bahadur Rai and his family benefit from our commitment to provide a helping hand to people in need in the Himalayan region of Nepal.

After a a life-changing expedition near Mt. Everest, Mike Salomon made a commitment to support the giving Sherpa people of the Himalaya. Sherpa Performance Guides carries this commitment forward. We donate five percent of the company’s profits and five percent of its time and effort to helping the children of the company’s adopted Himalayan village, Sewangma.

In April 2000, we participated with Ken Stober in the building of a three-hundred-foot suspension bridge and trail system. The bridge connects the village of Sewangma to vital services including the local school, farmers’ market, and medical clinic.

Since the creation of the bridge and trail system, Sherpa Performance Guides has continued to look for ways to aid the community of Sewangma and other villages in the Sherpa region of Nepal. This includes funding a sanitation project in Sewangma and assuming permanent sponsorship of Kul Bahadur Rai, a high-altitude porter, and his family. Kul was unable to support his wife and two daughters as a result of an unfortunate climbing incident that left him with both his feet partially amputated due to frostbite. As a result of this amputation, he is unable to return to portering.

Sherpa Performance Guides also maintains an initiative called the Adopt-A-Village Program to allow other companies to help Sherpa villages like Sewangma. By donating money to this program, companies have the chance to aid their own village and make a difference in hundreds of people’s lives.

Currently we are in the process of helping to fund a project to install a second oxygen concentrator near Gokyo Lakes to aid climbers and local porters who have altitude-related emergencies such as cerebral edema, pulmonary edema, and AMS. We are also working to provide support for the International Mountain Explorers Connection’s (IMEC) porter assistance program