Making an impact: ‘Children of the Snow Land’ launches trekking charity
Earlier this week CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND had its Zlin Film Festival premiere in a sold out Golden Apple theatre. This moving documentary finds a group of children in a remote Nepalese village having to decide between their family and their future. Born high in the Himalayas, the children were sent away from home at age 4, to be taught at a school in the capital city, Kathmandu. With no ability to return home, they are away for more than a decade. But at 16, upon graduating, they get the chance to make the journey back home to reunite with their parents.
The funding for these journeys home is no longer secure and so the film’s director Zara Balfour is now launching a trekking charity to enable more children to be reconnected with their parents upon their graduation from Snow Land School.
The charity, Snow Land Journeys, will offer people the chance to go on the treks featured in the documentary itself, accompanying the children as they journey home upon graduation from the school. By going on that journey, trekkers will be directly helping to fund the children to make this journey. This will ensure that every year the graduating children will be able to see their families again after ten long years away.
The treks will also offer the chance to be completely off-grid in an ancient culture away from tourists and the modern world, because the children come from the most remote, highest inhabited villages on the planet, amidst the stunning scenery of Nepal’s untouched Far West Himalayas. Experienced expedition leaders will accompany and lead each trek.
As well as funding the journey home treks, Snow Land Journeys will contribute to the running of Snow Land School and development of the children there. It will also be possible to sponsor a child’s education via this new charity.
Snow Land Journeys will offer several other trekking routes as well as those featured in the film, for all levels of fitness and desired degree of challenge.
The first treks will be in April 2020.
For more information, to sign up for a trek, or to sponsor a child’s education, please check out our website.