Footprint Foundation was founded on a straightforward observation: the environmental cost of tourism in Nepal and the human cost of tourism in Nepal are the same problem, and almost nobody treats them that way. Conservation groups work on the trails. Labour advocates work on the workers. We work on both, because the guide clearing your litter and the mountain accumulating it are part of one system.
We are a young organisation. We would rather tell you precisely what we do than impressively what we intend.
Footprint Foundation, Kathmandu
How We Work
Local ownership, not local participation
A programme that ends when we leave was never a programme. Every clean-up has a local waste route. Every plantation has a community that owns the saplings. We design for the day we are not there.
Locally Owned
Every programme is handed to a local partner who owns it after we leave.
Local Ownership
Local partners keep the work going long after the volunteers go home.
Repetition
One clean-up every month for three years beats one national campaign for one week.
Specificity
We would rather plant fewer trees that survive than more that photograph well.
Transparency
We publish what we did, where and with whom, including what underperformed.
Local Ownership
Our Team
A small team in Kathmandu, plus the volunteers, community partners and municipal staff we work with in the field.
EDITOR NOTE: REPLACE THIS: add your team members’ names, roles and one-line bios here, and add their photos. This is the highest-value block on the whole site: donors fund people, not mission statements.