What We Do
Objectives & Goals
Our Story

What we do

Peaksoverpoverty.org is an alternative fundraising vehicle for locally led, non-profit initiatives that cultivate healthier families and environments worldwide.

The web-based platform empowers grassroots non-profit organizations to raise more money and reach more people.

Objectives & Goals

To provide an open portal for non-profits to leverage crowd-sourced capital, advocate and educate, recruit participation, bridge connections, forge new alliances, and achieve lasting community-based solutions.

What is crowd-sourced capital (or crowd funding)? The collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. (Wikipedia)

To provide opportunities for community members to make direct connections with projects they identify as worthwhile.

Here’s an idea of additional services we’d like to provide:

To host a directory for businesses that offer products and services that give back to local initiatives.

To host a directory of internship and career opportunities available at participating non-profit organizations.

Our Story

Our organization started, quite literally, with the idea of overcoming major obstacles, mountain peaks in Ecuador, in support of even greater, entrenched challenges like poverty. More recently, “peaks” have become a metaphor for the challenges that suppress the health and wellbeing of families and environments worldwide. Since 2008, our vision has traveled from Ecuador to Ithaca, NY.

Emma (co-founder) developed an early passion and understanding of nature as a means of sustenance and healthy recreation on family hikes and in the kitchen garden. It was not until her Fulbright research in Ecuador with rural farmers that she understood how food and mountain sports intersect. The trails and glaciers on her expeditions played a more crucial role for local residents: transit for livestock and water. This awakening fueled Emma’s commitment to link worlds and create a holistic strategy for needed resources. (See Full Bio.)

Steve’s (co-founder) inspiration is rooted in a childhood lesson taught by his family in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky: people will not overcome poverty by what they lack but must learn to use intelligently what they have. Tragically, the historic arrival of the “expert” and his/her project-based contributions, regardless of intentions, has supplanted the role of local people in development. He has dedicated his life to reversing the effects of paternalism and dependency on mountain people. (See Full Bio.)

Emma and Steve met in Ecuador, where Steve was the regional director for World Neighbors in the Andes, and supervised Emma’s Fulbright Research on the Canastas Comunitarias. (World Neighbors has since closed its programs in Ecuador due to the financial crisis, however, the organization persisted under a new name; EkoRural).

As avid outdoors enthusiasts, the founders conceived Peaks Over Poverty during a hike in the Andes in 2008. We were frustrated by the administrative restrictions of external donations on local, agricultural development projects, in particular with regard to the stifling effect that pre-planned projects impose on local initiative and creativity. Peaks could offer an alternative source of highly flexible resources needed for more effective community-led development. Starting with the climbathon model, we identified unique ways to bridge financial and operational shortcomings in rural mountain development with the fundraising and advocacy potential of the international outdoors community. In September of 2010 we officially launched Peaks Over Poverty!

Steve and Emma have deep-rooted and new ties to the Ithaca community. Steve completed an M.P.S. in International Agriculture and Rural Development (C’95) and continues to work with Cornell-affiliated colleagues in Ecuador, including the Executive Director of EkoRural, and globally. Emma recently moved to Ithaca with her fiancee (a Johnson MBA Candidate), and works with the McKnight Foundation Collaborative Crop Research Program. The founders had long since considered Ithaca to be a thriving, conscientious, vibrant, and diverse community for grounding Peaks’ activities in the U.S.. In September 2011, they will launch the first domestic Challenge Campaigns to support local initiatives around healthy families and environments.