Improving the Roof of the World

Photograph by Kathy Wood

Twenty-three years ago, Richard C. Blum, an investment banker in San Francisco, visited Nepal to climb mountains near Mount Everest. After becoming smitten with the place and its people, he started the American Himalayan Foundation, which supports the construction of schools, retirement homes, and health clinics; the restoration of cultural landmarks; tree planting; and other projects in rural areas of Nepal, Tibet, India, Bhutan, and Pakistan.

The nine-person group works with other American charities including Fund for the Tiger, in Woodacre, Calif., which helps prevent poaching in India and Nepal, as well as with local nonprofit organizations such as the Tibetan Women’s Association, which operates a home for the elderly.

The common theme among the charity’s projects is improving everyday life for local people, says Erica Stone, the group’s president. “I think of us as a direct benefit organization,” she says. “We are happier to build a school than to fund a conference about schools.”

For example, the foundation has supported projects in several small towns in Mustang, a region of Nepal that takes four days by plane and five days on horseback to reach from San Francisco. The foundation helped refurbish a monastic school, established a day-care center, started an irrigation project, and restored two 15th-century temples.

A little money goes a long way in many of the countries where the organization works: The foundation’s $2.5-million annual budget helps support about 75 projects, says Ms. Stone. Fund-raising events, five of which the Dalai Lama has attended, generate a third of its budget and the remainder comes from individuals and foundations. Mr. Blum, who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, underwrites the foundation’s operating costs and recently pledged $10-million over the next seven years.

Through one project the foundation supports, shown here, Tibetan students are given textbooks in their own language. Such books are rarely available and typically too expensive for many youngsters to afford.