About Moving Mountains

We work hard at Moving Mountains to get it right with how we run the charity in the UK, our professionalism and due diligence, and how we handle donors money. This page describes our main principles:

• Our Values
• Hand out or leg up?
• Working with our partners
• Rights based approach
• Proper funding plan
• Capacity Building
• Social Enterprises
• Conservation projects
• Community 0wnership
• Gender equality
• Value for money
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Measuring our impact
• Recording the change we make
• Supporting our volunteers

Our Values 

We believe that it’s not enough to simply say that we want to ‘do good’, we have to have the knowledge and expertise and experience to manage developmental issues. We need to interact with partners and stakeholders who can help us, instead of acting in an insular way thinking ‘we know best’. We do this with a set of values:

• Compassion - we don’t treat people anonymously; everybody has a story which deserves understanding and personal attention.
• Integrity - we act with fairness and with a belief in doing things the right way.
• Equality - we help people realise their dreams and ambitions without discrimination
• Collaboration - we work in partnership with communities and have a ‘level playing field’ view where local ownership and shared responsibility is uppermost in our minds.
• Confidence - we give people the confidence and self-esteem to believe in their potential.
• Participation - nobody likes to feel as if they have to face the world alone and we work hard to make Moving Mountains a ‘family’.
• Transparency - we monitor our impacts, justify our expenditure and report back to donors.

Hand out or leg up?

We don’t want to fall into the trap of ‘handout aid’, our purpose is to create the circumstances in which individuals and communities can prosper, which includes generating wealth and promoting social enterprise, and providing direct support where necessary.

We achieve this with a ‘bottom up’ policy that starts with supporting the family, and enabling the people of the community to build the livelihoods they need. We have many heart-warming stories of families breaking out of the poverty cycle, communities turning their villages around, forests being regenerated and successful individuals gaining tertiary education, careers and living their ambitions.

Working with our partners

We equip our partners with the means to set up their own local Moving Mountains non-profit and encourage local management and participation in all the programmes and projects, and local ownership. This model has been very successful and ensures equitable partnerships.  We also adopt a ‘start small, think big’ mentality which allows projects to progress organically over a long period, and this has generated a high level of trust and shared accountability.

Rights based approach

Rights are usually expressed in legal terminology; at Moving Mountains we want to ensure that above all compassion and the need to be loved and respected is at the heart of our work. We adopt the 'rights based approach' to social development, and we uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development which states that: "The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised.”

Our principles are that:

• Human rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away from someone or voluntarily given up.
• Everyone is entitled to their rights regardless of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property ownership, caste, birth or other status.
• The right to education affects the right to work and the right to good health, and vice versa. This helps us to link the root causes of problems to the symptoms of the problem. 
• Everyone is free to contribute to and participate in the development of their communities.
• We accept our obligation as 'duty bearers' to deliver rights to our beneficiaries and the responsibility for the impact it has on people's lives.
• We co-operate by sharing information with other duty bearers, undertaking transparent processes and hearing people's views.
• We accept our role to be driven by our obligation to protect, respect and fulfil the rights of people and to be accountable to those people in this regard.
• We hold that a person whose rights are unfulfilled, such as the right to food, education, health, participation, freedom of speech, is a poor person; therefore poverty is more than a lack of material resources but a consequence of exclusion and powerlessness.
• We don't regard development and the realisation of human rights as separate things; development is part of the process of fulfilling human rights.

Proper funding plan

Moving Mountains Trust is focused on spending in the right ways, on the right things, and in the right places.

Getting the relationship between the charity and the beneficiary right is critical, and a lot of time is spent assessing the consequences of our actions using realistic frames of reference and establishing an agreement of funding with aims and reporting.

We use a system of online budgets and payment spreadsheets for everyone to see and use, and at least three of the UK Trustees are in continual contact with the operations in-country to ensure that the funding process is monitored throughout.  All payments from the UK Trust to Kenya and Nepal are receipted and accounted for.

Having said that, money is only ever part of the solution, especially when children are involved, and we work hard to make sure that other values are instilled into the MM family spirit such as compassion and of course equality.

Capacity Building

Our strapline claims to change lives and we try very hard to ensure our work is not misunderstood and has a positive long-term impact on the beneficiaries. To ensure this happens we employ people with a wide range of skills. Our main funding stream is for teachers, medical personnel, counsellors and social workers who teach life skills and act as mentors to young people and their families.

We take young people through all levels of education so that the outcome is a rounded person with a vocation in all sorts of professions, from accountancy to agricultural management. Capacity building is therefore essential to our success, as we help people become the architects of their own success through education and training.

Social enterprises

We view our capital projects as investments in the community, or seed capital for social enterprises which enable people to break out of poverty through business and benefit their community. This approach builds self-esteem and is culturally acceptable. 

Social enterprise is a driving force for income and progress and increased quality of life in the areas where we work, and our funding helps to achieve this in a way that is consistent with the values of the people that live there.

We work with the local Government authorities and offer our assistance in the 'bigger picture'. Villagers and communities make a significant commitment to the project, which might be in the form of land or labour, but ultimately our work contributes to a national aim which avoids the pitfall of building a 'white elephant' which fails because of lack of collaboration and understanding.

Conservation Projects

Another objective in our trust deed is the protection of natural resources and we have worked hard to learn about the technicalities of difficult tasks like reforestation in remote areas. 

We fund the expertise in order to enable the local people to understand the problems and source the technology which might help provide the solution. In the case of our forest enrichment project in Sarawak, we took practical steps to employ people to collect seeds and eventually transpose saplings into logged areas, ensuring the correct variety of plants and trees.

We also invest in technology which helps to prevent deforestation, for example in Nepal where we buy and install specially designed cooking stoves that use less wood and produce no smoke in the home. Again, we find that a holistic and collaborative approach to complex issues, without imposing solutions from afar, is the best way forward.

Community Ownership

We work on the belief that the development of community assets contributes to a thriving civil society and ownership is a big part of community development. It's not just about owning assets such schools, community centres and renewable energy assets, it is also about the self-management of those assets and how they contribute to wider social goals, eg. empowerment, regeneration, well-being and 'place making'.

Community means local, resident-led and usually neighbourhood-based organisations that are neither public nor private and usually operate on a not-for-profit basis. We work with a number of organisational models such as community based organisations (CBOs), village co-operatives and community development trusts. We believe that without these structures in place, most development projects fail; the issue of ownership has to be clearly agreed in the planning stages so that the community understands it's responsibilities.

We have worked hard with each of our regional NGOs and the local communities to establish strong relationships based on trust and transparency. Different cultures have established ways of handling the concept of community ownership, and our role is to ensure that local voices are heard, and there is a fair distribution of influence over decisions; equally it is important to agree who will be affected by the process and the outcomes of a project.

Getting it right means agreeing on the strategic interests of a community and how everyone contributes to the aim or goal. Community ownership in itself builds trust and promotes learning and participation, and acts as a strong example for others to follow.

Gender Equality

We recognise that gender equality and the empowerment of women are important goals in their own right and vital to poverty elimination. We don't just make it an emotive or personal response to the issue of gender though, we make it a structural part of the charity with awareness training and promoting attitudinal change amongst all our staff, plus making sure that we conduct informal audits about attitudes and programmes on the ground.

All our initiatives must demonstrate consideration of gender issues which are relevant and appropriate to the context of what we are doing. We make sure that there are no barriers or threats or risks for women or girls, this includes disability and ethnicity. Having said that, equality does not mean that everyone has to be the same, we need to embrace diversity and the richness of human life. This means that our central tenet of empowerment and equality means equal visibility, empowerment and participation of all sexes in all spheres of life. Development at its core should be governed by both men and women. We do not promote a bias towards women, but rather an unbiased approach towards men. This is a much easier way of looking at inequality and less threatening to some people.

Of course gender differences are socially defined and differ between different countries and cultures, so they are not fixed and therefore can be changed. Clearly we have to tread carefully, but we use this description between equality of opportunity and equity of outcomes as an assistance:

"Equality of opportunity means that women and men should have equal rights and entitlements to human, social, economic and cultural development, and an equal voice in civil and political life. Gender equity means that the exercise of these rights and entitlements should lead to outcomes which are fair and just. This distinction is important because it underlines the rights of women to define for themselves the objectives of development and to seek outcomes which are not necessarily identical to those sought and enjoyed by men." 

(DfID - Department of International Development - UK AID)

Value for Money

Our work is dedicated to the goal of reducing poverty and we aim to deliver value for money in everything we do on behalf of our donors. We are determined to ensure that every pound we spend has the biggest possible impact on the ground.

Value for money (VFM) is about striking the best balance between the “three E’s” − economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and this is what we aim to achieve with all the money we spend on behalf of our beneficiaries and also our donors. We think about using our resources well and we are very careful in projecting figures over a long period of time so that we never have to cancel any of our programmes. Since our ethos is all about long term sustainable development we try to engage our donors in this way of thinking, rather than short-term-ist solutions.

Like any good organisation managing it's finances and outcomes properly, we employ a rigorous process before every planned expenditure. The question of what the funds are supposed to achieve is as important as the amount spent, and we want to ensure that any financial assistance is valid and managed well, and that those we put in charge of development projects are always seeking to make it work better. Fundamentally we want to know whether the money will result in our presence eventually being unnecessary, so we adopt standard concepts of impact mapping to help us make informed decisions. We are also fortunate to have Adventure Alternative covering the vast majority of our administrative costs.

Nowadays there are plenty of aid sceptics who claim that aid is wasteful, and therefore it is important for us to provide clear numerical evidence for how our money is spent and what have been the outcomes. At the same time some people dismiss VFM as impractical and even inhumane. We aim to prove that the reality is somewhere between the two extremes by finding the right balance between economy, efficiency and effectiveness.

We don't monetise everything and apply a cost-benefit analysis to every expenditure. The quality of the outcomes is fundamental to understanding whether something is providing value, so we are not always looking for the cheapest option or the biggest cost saving. However we do want to reduce inefficiencies in how aid is managed so that it can achieve good development results.

The reality is that assessing value for money is not easy in a development context, partly because of getting reliable good quality data in some areas, and partly because there is a lack of consensus on value for money for whom, of what and from whose perspective. Our belief is that by properly working together with all our stakeholders and making collaborative decisions with each of the people who manage our NGO in each country, we are doing our best to ensure that all of the money in Moving Mountains is well spent.

Sustainable Development Goals

We are part of the Beyond 2015 Campaign for a global civil society which aims to bring together groups from developing, emerging and developed economies in order to promote a strong and legitimate successor to the Millennium Development Goals. The Goals which came out in the Millennium year of 2000 are due to expire in 2015 and they will be replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals, which underpin our work along with human rights.

Moving a mountain takes a lot of time and effort by a lot of people all working together. Changing people's attitudes towards development in terms of the future of the world sounds fanciful and probably impractical, but if everyone could contribute equally to a consensus of opinion then history shows that great things

Measuring our impact

Sound financial management in charities matters, and understanding how charities spend their money is a key driver of public trust. Every penny has to count and be accounted for, and all the projects and programmes should be evaluated and justified and have a purpose that complies with the objectives of the charity. 

In Moving Mountains the Trustees take collective responsibility for managing the charity’s resources and justify the expenditure by providing evidence of need from the regional MM organisations. Trustees are not distant to the operations of each ‘MM’ in Kenya, Nepal or Borneo, but are involved on a daily basis with details such as proposals, cash flow and financial reporting.

Expenditures are discussed on a continual basis and all the information is held on cloud so that everyone has access to see and edit documents. Our communication is a big part of our success in managing funds safely. 

We take the view that our money has to be earned, evaluated and accounted for, or else it stops. We try not to use the word ‘aid’ because of its associations with ‘free’ money, and we work hard to ensure that money is only ever a part of the solution to any problem. 

Recording the change we make

We want to show how our funding creates measurable change through proper reporting. We ask ourselves questions like "what is the value of our work?", "what would happen if we stopped our work?", and "what are the developmental goals and the specific aims of the programme?".

Too many charities create reliance and complacency, so we also look at the sustainability of our work into the future. All of the projects on this website display a timeline or history, which is important because it shows when we began and when we stopped our support. Our impact needs to have a beginning, middle and end.

One of the ways to make sure that this is understood is by having agreements which are witnessed by all the stakeholders, defining who does what and who gets what. This is all part of establishing the parameters of a successful development project, and it prevents so-called 'white elephants' which are all too common throughout the developing world.

We collect information on all our programmes, mostly informally through a continual discourse with the regional trustees. Data is collected in a number of ways which are relevant and sympathetic to the communities and area being visited. Some of it is handwritten on forms, some of it is online, some video and photographic.

Quantitative data is slightly easier – for example, number of children in school. Qualitative data is harder to collect and understand – there are different meanings to the phrase ‘quality of life’ for example, and we need to be careful not to impose foreign concepts of happiness, achievement, progress and so on to people whose perception of life is different. This interaction between us and the beneficiaries is why we love what we do. Over many years those beneficiaries become friends and colleagues and it's much easier to gauge the 'rightness' of what we do.

Our local MM organisations help us a lot – they know exactly what it means to feel secure, stable, happy or inspired. The volunteers who come out often find themselves learning about these differences in life values because we ask them to get involved with our staff in collecting data and helping us evaluate our work.

Our staff are medically trained and experienced in first aid and health and safety, and the guides receive specific training in altitude-related illnesses and how to cope with an emergency. The staff all carry mobile phones and satellite phones if necessary. On the mountain trips we carry pulse oximeters, oxygen bottles where necessary on the higher mountains and first aid kits which are regularly checked and replenished.

We work hard to ensure that all of our staff adopt high levels of sanitation and hygiene, especially with regard to food and water. Food is stored and transported carefully, and bought fresh from local trusted suppliers. We always check the restaurants and lodges that we use for their standards in food hygiene. Drinking water is provided from the kitchens boiled and strained and we promote a policy of not buying and using disposable plastic bottles where possible. 

For school and youth groups and volunteers we always provide training in health and safety prior to the trip, and general advice on how to manage yourself personally while on a visit abroad. This is then emphasized again on arrival in country and our staff are always careful to ensure that people are looking after themselves. They have a long experience of looking after foreign groups and understand the pitfalls of travelling abroad for the first time.

Supporting our volunteers

When we start corresponding with people about their trip we aim to make sure the group works well together and our staff are well experienced in managing all types of people and keeping everyone happy and satisfied. Nobody feels anonymous and our staff in the main office and in the regional offices communicate all the time about upcoming groups and personal preferences.

For school and youth trips we provide a higher number of logistical staff and also male and female pastoral care staff with specific experience and qualifications in looking after young people. These might be teachers or youth workers, social workers and of course medical professionals. Volunteers and charity groups and school groups are all provided with personal care and training in preparation for their trip. 

Many of our trips are scheduled for groups, but we provide just as many trips for private groups who have preferences for dates or itineraries. A large part of our time is spent creating these bespoke trips, for which is there is no additional cost. We find this is especially useful for charities, since we do not impose contractual conditions for this service.