How Alpkit Foundation grants fund the courses, qualifications and training that turn first-time adventurers into confident, qualified outdoor leaders and instructors.
Some of the most useful things the Alpkit Foundation funds aren't equipment at all. They're courses: an award that builds a young person's confidence and CV, a qualification that lets a volunteer keep leading others safely, a weekend of training that turns a keen beginner into someone a club can trust with a group. The kit list matters, but so does the person holding it.
What a course gives back
The Outward Bound Trust's Skills for Life award takes 15 to 19 year olds on a 19-day expedition through the Scottish Highlands: kayaking, camping, hiking and gorge walking, building toward a CV and a set of references most teenagers don't get until they've already started work. Grants have helped fund several young people onto the course. Elizabeth used hers to test herself physically and mentally before her GCSEs, with an eye on a university application further down the line.
Chloe's story carries more weight. At 16 she became homeless and estranged from her parents, and found housing support through Glasgow's Fire Station Project, which works with young people at risk of homelessness. It was the Fire Station Project that first put her forward for a five-day residential at Outward Bound's Loch Eil centre, and that week changed her mind about what she could do next. "I am quite a shy person and have struggled with interviews and communicating with people," she said. "This course is going to give me the confidence and skills needed to help me move on and hopefully get into employment or future training." A grant funded the full 19-day Skills for Life course, extending that first taste with a year-long training plan and instructor references to build on.
Training the people who train others
Campaign for National Parks runs a residential course called New Perspectives: Future Leaders, designed to get more young people into National Parks and into the conversations that shape them. Only 6% of visitors to England and Wales's National Parks are aged 16 to 24, and a grant went toward headtorches, first aid kits and waterproofs so participants without their own gear could still take part. The equipment gets returned and reused on future courses. One participant, Pari, put it simply afterwards: "What stayed with me wasn't just the landscape. It was the people, the conversations, and the radical rethinking of leadership and conservation that sparked something deeper."
Bristol District Woodcraft Folk had a narrower brief: get its own older members trained up as bushcraft leaders, so every group in the organisation could access the activity. Eleven volunteers spent a weekend at Escot Park near Exeter, sleeping in hammocks and tarps for the first time and learning knots, fire lighting and campfire cooking alongside how to manage a group safely outdoors. "Thank you for a brilliant weekend!" wrote Jen, one of the new volunteers. "I feel inspired and ready to do something bushcrafty with our group soon! I'm really chuffed to have learned 3 knots and to have spent a really comfortable night in a hammock!"
At the University of Birmingham Mountaineering Club, the problem was more basic: no training budget meant no new instructors, and no new instructors meant capping membership. Every committee member leading a climbing trip has to complete a Ropeworks course, a Single Pitch Award and an Outdoor First Aid course first. "We thought our club committee would have to downsize, meaning membership numbers would be cut in the interests of safety," said treasurer Fergal Marrett. A grant covered one committee member's training instead, and the club kept its numbers and its waiting list of newcomers wanting to try climbing for the first time.
The qualifications that keep clubs running
Matthew Scott had already seen what expeditions with the British Exploring Society could do for young people, first as a volunteer Knowledge Leader on a trip to the Scottish Highlands. To take on more responsibility on future expeditions, he needed his Mountain Leader qualification. A £150 grant went toward the training costs in the Lake District. "The last week of October when I undertook my training was a very wet week, with significant flooding in the Lake District," he said. "Myself and the rest of those on my training course managed to not get washed away, and successfully completed our Mountain Leader Training." The qualification means he can now take on more of the volunteer leadership that made such an impression on him in the first place.
The Foundation has also funded training places directly. A partnership with Thornbridge Outdoors subsidised six spots on a Hill and Moorland Leader course, reducing the cost from over £200 a head to £100, for walkers wanting to lead groups safely across the UK and Ireland's hill and moorland terrain. It's the same principle running through all of these grants: a course is cheap compared to what it lets someone go on to do with it, for themselves and for everyone they end up leading.
The Alpkit Foundation funds the courses and qualifications behind safe, confident outdoor leadership, as well as the trips and kit that go with them. If you're running a training project that needs support, find out how to apply.