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SED student ascends educational heights teaching mountaineering to orphans in Kyrgyzstan

By David J. Craig

Garth Willis is characteristically unpretentious when describing his love for hiking: "It's what I've always liked to do -- it's just fun."

As part of his master's thesis at the School of Education, Garth Willis (SED'02) founded and directs the Alpine Fund, a hiking program that teaches institutionalized youths in Kyrgyzstan basic life skills. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

As director of a mountaineering program for orphans in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, however, Willis (SED'02) gives teens something more lasting than a good time: he gives them hope.

"These kids are bored, they don't know what to do with themselves, and they have almost no contact with anyone outside their orphanages," says Willis, who founded the Alpine Fund in Kyrgyzstan while on a U.S. State Department grant 18 months ago. Running the organization is part of his master's thesis project in international education development at the School of Education. "We give them something to look forward to," he says. "When I drive up in my van, I've got 100 kids running at me, and they're all competing to show how enthused they are about what we do."

What they do is rigorous physical training twice a week. Those who keep up with the regimen accompany Willis on weekly hiking expeditions into the mountains overlooking Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital, where they camp, learn survival skills, and collect trash. "These kids are surrounded by beautiful mountains all the time, and they never get to go up them," says the 37-year-old former sporting goods salesman. "You can tell it inspires them by how excited they get. We can only afford to bring about 15 kids up on each hiking trip, and they're always buddying up to me, pleading with me to go on the next one.

"It's also good for them because I think we're giving them the respect that they don't usually get," he says. "In the schools, the teacher-student relationships are very rigid, Soviet-style. And here are we, adults who play soccer with them, hike with them, and yell at them to make sure their backpacks fit correctly. Once they realized that we were coming every week, it wasn't hard to earn their trust. They've told me that they meet a lot of foreigners who come and give them presents, and then they never see them again."

Rising expectations
Willis first traveled to Kyrgyzstan in 1995 for a recreational climb and stayed three years, learning Russian and taking a job as a U.S. government aid worker. A small, impoverished nation situated on China's western border, Kyrgyzstan is about 95 percent mountainous -- which is ideal for sightseeing, but murder for an economy. Many adults have emigrated in search of work, and as a result more than 50 percent of the nation's population is under 18. "Just about every kid in Kyrgyzstan is at risk," says Willis. "You see it every day, kids hanging out on the street, fighting, begging."

The initial concept of the Alpine Fund was simple: bring orphans on hikes, teach them discipline and respect for nature, and prepare them for jobs as tourist guides. "I realized very quickly that that was an unrealistic goal, because these kids need to learn a lot of basic life and communication skills before they're going to get jobs," says Willis. "That's why the project added the educational programs."

In addition to its flagship hiking program, which serves orphans in Bishkek and in Osh, a city on Kyrgyzstan's western border, the Alpine Fund now provides tutorials for the teens. Taught by local college student volunteers, subjects range from English to computers to HIV/AIDS prevention to children's rights. Similar tutorials and a summer camp are offered to inmates at a juvenile detention center about an hour outside of Bishkek.

In April, Willis is launching a series of seminars that bring together youth from several institutions to discuss their opinions and attitudes toward life. The goal, he says, is to "have them understand that their opinions matter."

A stake in the program
With a staff of seven and relying on dozens of volunteers, the Alpine Fund so far has served more than 150 youths on an operating budget of just $1,500 a month. About 80 percent of the organization's funds come from a UNICEF grant that expires in August.

	An Alpine Fund camp outside of Bishkek, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. Photo courtesy of Garth Willis

Willis knows that with a master's degree and his knowledge of Kyrgyzstan he soon could land a high-paying government aid job in the country. But he'd prefer to stay involved in the Alpine Fund, he says, handing over its day-to-day management to someone else, and focusing on fundraising and starting similar programs in Central and Eastern Europe. Currently, he's planning to trim his staff and employ fewer but more highly trained workers, such as a psychologist with expertise dealing with children.

"Financially this is hard, and I'm trying the best I can to get the American, Canadian, French, and European climbing communities involved, because that could be a whole other avenue of financial support for us," he says. "One thing you learn very quickly with these kids is that you can't let them down, because everyone in their lives has let them down. They remember promises, and they're obsessed with issues of fairness. If I leave and this program doesn't survive without me, I would have failed them."

Garth Willis will present a public slide show about his experiences directing the Alpine Fund at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 22, in Room 130 of the School of Education, 605 Commonwealth Ave. For more information about the Alpine Fund, visit http://alpinefund.freenet.kg/.

29 March 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations