Girls in Action 2025!
Press Release
On Sept. 11th, with a lively and well-attended ceremony organised by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Pakistani province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa at the Government Post Graduate College for Girls in Saidu Sharif, Swat, the advanced eco-friendly mountaineering course called SWAT AND CHITRAL GIRLS IN ACTION! came to an end.
This was the third edition of the course designed and implemented by the Asian Desk of Mountain Wilderness International (with the support of CAAI, Italian Academic Alpine Club, and ISMEO, International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies) to offer local young women the opportunity to test themselves in activities traditionally reserved for males, such as rock climbing, ice climbing and trekking. The project was part of a series of initiatives carried out by MW in the region, with the ultimate goal of establishing a protected area in the Swat mountains, extending into neighbouring Chitral.
Due to unusually intense flooding, the location for the course was moved, with considerable difficulty, from Chitral to Upper Hunza, its base camp being in the vicinity of the village of Passu, at the foot of the majestic glacier bearing the same name. The course counted a total of 24 trainees, aged between 16 and 22. Six were from Chitral, sixteen from Swat and two from the remote valleys of Kafiristan, where pagan and polytheistic populations (Kalash) still live. All of them shared a tented base camp for two weeks.
The aim of this advanced course was to train young women to make them suitable for jobs such as trekking guides, instructors for outdoor activities within the compulsory school system, environmental sentinels and nature park rangers.
Once again, the course was an all-women’s one. All trainers were women from various mountaineering schools of the Italian Alpine Club, as well as members of Mountain Wilderness. Here are their names: Lorenza Pratali, Sara Pozzetti, Francesca Zennaro, Sarah Haase, and Erminia Devoti. The only men involved were solely responsible for the organisation, and often worked behind the scenes: Carlo Alberto Pinelli, director, Francesco Cappellari, and Fazal Khaliq, deputy directors.
Substantial help was provided by the Pakistani chapter of Mountain Wilderness through the involvement of its president, Afzel Scherazi, and member Tauqeer. Besides practical lessons, theoretical lessons were given, focusing on environmental protection, high-altitude medicine and first aid, mountain geography, and orientation with a compass and maps.
The screening of the old documentary on the first cleaning expedition in the Himalayas FREE K2, carried out in 1990, was a great success.
In his speech at the certificate award ceremony, Carlo Alberto Pinelli, Honorary President of Mountain Wilderness International, in charge of the NGO’s Asian Desk, described the course as a complete success, exceeding even the most optimistic expectations.
In a society still partly influenced by archaic traditions, the project took on the appearance of a genuine cultural revolution. Trainees now know that there are no human activities that cannot be successfully practised by women, in the mountains, as elsewhere.
The project was made possible thanks to the help and support of: Banca Sella, Mountain Partnership, ISMEO, Italian Academic Alpine Club, Epitech, FERRINO, SCARPA and Hdry.