The Baltistan Fundazioa foundation, an international development cooperation NGO that works in the Pakistani Karakorum, will be recognized with the WOP-The Walk On Project 2020 Award of the BBK Mendi Film Bilbao-Bizkaia festival. The award ceremony will be held during the 13th edition of the festival, between 4th and 13th of December 2020, in Bilbao.

It is the award for the defense of mountaineering values, which the WOP Foundation recognises for the 7th consecutive year at the Mendifilm. "We believe that Baltistan Fundazioa represents, like few others, commitment in a broad sense, in the context in which the alpine activity takes place", highlights Mikel Renteria, CEO of WOP.

With Pakistan and the Himalayas being a witness territory of great alpine and sporting feats, the Baltistan Fudazioa, created by mountaineers, has been taking a committed look at that environment and its inhabitants for 20 years. "Solidarity, commitment, and letting ourselves be carried away by the needs of the environment that surrounds our life and our passions, are ways of living that the WOP Foundation and Mendifilm reward through this award," Renteria highlights.

With a range of projects promoted from our land and developed in Pakistan in the fields of the environment, job placement, education, dignity, women and health, among others, "the Baltistan Foundation has been awarded the award in this 2020 edition, so unique in the context in which we are living and in which examples like yours are especially necessary". 

 

Winners of the WOP-BBK Mendi Film Bilbao-Bizkaia Award:

 

Baltistan Fundazioa is an international development cooperation NGO that works for the human, integral and endogenous development of the people in the communities of the Hushé Valley, in Baltistan, an isolated high mountain region in northern Pakistan. It is a reference organization in the world of mountaineering and its motto is: The mountain, a bond of solidarity.

The Foundation was born as Felix Iñurrategi-Baltistan Fundazioa in 2001 as a tribute to the Basque mountaineer Felix Iñurrategi, who died precisely in one of the eight-thousanders of the Karakorum, the Gasherbrum II. Friends, family and mountaineers were its founders, with vague objectives at the beginning, but with the clear idea of providing the inhabitants of the area with the necessary skills and infrastructure so that they could promote and manage their own model of sustainable and equitable economic development for men and women.

Baltistan Fundazioa contributes to the integral development by working for the improvement of the education of the children; for the improvement of the health of the valley, and by enhancing the acquisition of knowledge and skills of the inhabitants through training for the improvement of the socio-economic development. It also facilitates the processes of women's empowerment and the equalization of rights between men and women in all areas (education, health, culture and personal autonomy).

Baltistan Fundazioa works in a respectful way with the local agents, thus promoting an endogenous development. It coordinates with different groups, committees and local associations and among them with Felix Foundation Baltistan (FFB), a foundation composed exclusively of people from the area. It collaborates by strengthening its leadership as an agent of development, its autonomy and a functioning in accordance with the principles of mountaineering.