Each year, during our Christmas dinners, we organise a lottery to collect donations for charity organisations and projects around the world. In 2019, together we collectively donated €41,500, split between four projects: (1) supplying reusable menstrual pads for women in Kenya (2) supporting the municipality of Feltre, which was damaged during the storms hitting Northern Italy in 2018; (3) supporting victims of the 2019 earthquake in Albania; and (4) supporting a South Tyrolean family in need.
- Group
- Brands
- Sustainability
- People & Careers
- News & Events
- Press
- Brands
- Our mountain brands
- Exclusive partner brands
- Our mountain brands
- Brand overview
- Salewa
- Dynafit
- Pomoca
- Wild Country
- Evolv
- LaMunt
- Exclusive partner brands
- Brand overview
- Under Armour
- Smith
- Fischer
- Barts
- Falke
- Burlington
- 2117 of Sweden
- People & Careers
- Working at Oberalp
- Work with us
- News & Events
- Magazine
- Oberalp Summit
- Home
- Sustainability
- Social Engagement
We want to give back to the communities, nature and wildlife where we work and live. Through our community projects, we help integrate young refugees, get disabled people into work, give young Nepalese women access to education, and protect endangered wildlife.
In our vegetable garden in Bolzano, we help integrate around 15 young refugees by teaching them the basics of farming. We give them the opportunity to do meaningful work, learn how to cultivate organic fruit and vegetables from professional horticulturists, and get in touch with the locals. Our employees can also take home the produce on a weekly basis in exchange for a donation to the project. In 2019, we also sourced organic fertilizer for our garden from our recycled down supplier. They use the lower quality down that can no longer be recycled to make 100% natural and organix fertilizer. A way for us to close the loop!
The snow leopard is Dynafit's brand symbol and embodies its values and characteristics. Unfortunatly, it's been in danger of extinction, with an estimated 4,000-6,500 cats remaining worldwide. Dynafit organises annual ski touring events to raise money and awareness for the protection of snow leopards. For every vertical meter climbed by each participant, Dynafit donates 1cent to Snow Leopard Trust, an organisation that works to protect the endangered cat through community-based conservation projects. In 2019, €16,042 were donated!
In October 2018, Italy was hit with severe rains and storms. Thousands of hectares of forest were completely razed to the ground, and landslides and floods damaged large parts of the country. As one of our main offices is based in the heart of Veneto, which suffered a lot of damage, we decided to support the local community by helping to clean up and rebuild damaged areas. We donated €11,000-worth of shoes to the civil defence organisation and collected €13,000 to rebuild homes and clean destroyed forests and hiking paths.
Until the 1930s, climbing skins were manufactured from real seal skin. As a tribute to this animal, POMOCA supports a project that fights for the protection of the Saimaa ringed seal in Finland. It's been estimated that there are only 370-380 Saimaa seals remaining in Finland's Lake Saimaa. The project we are supporting mainly works to raise awareness around the issue and organise events to promote alternative fishing methods.
We're proud to say that 100% of Dynafit bindings are assembled by disabled workers. This gives them the opportunity to enter the world of work, gain independence and recognition that we believe they deserve. Dynafit collaborates with 3 different social organisations and all together we have around 170 disabled workers working on our products and in 2019 we produced around 108,000 pairs of bindings and 40,000 spare parts with the help of these workers.
Evolv is the only climbing company in the world that makes climbing shoes and foot for adaptive climbers. We work with several Adaptive Groups in the USA to help climbers with physical disabilities. We provided our adaptive foot and climbing shoe for sponsorship of an Italian athlete.
In 2019, we collaborated with the Design Faculty of the University of Bolzano (unibz) on a project to help homeless people in Bolzano stay dry and safe during the cold winter months. We donated residual products and material from our warehouse for the Design students to use for creating innovative solutions and objects. The top 3 projects were selected by a committee and will now be produced in larger quantities and distributed to the homeless in Bolzano.
Salewa has supported the Sherpa Women project since 2011 with various contributions. Since 2018, we have been in collaboration with the small organization “Sunshine Treks”. Together, we support Nepalese girls and women to give them access to education. The girls live across various towns in the Nepalese mountains. During Covid times, tourism in the area has almost ceased and incomes are even lower than usual. Which is why Salewa supports affected families as well. In 2019, Salewa has pledged an annual 5.000€ contribution to the cause as part of an ongoing sponsoring agreement with the organization.
On Black Friday in 2019, Salewa launched the second edition of the “Green is the new Black” campaign. This year, 3% of the total revenue collected through online and offline purchases from selected Salewa Stores (excluding returns) were donated to EOCA's plastic clean-up project "Plastic Free: Mountain to Sea". We donated a total of €11.500 to the project with the specific goal to plan mountain cleanups and initiatives in the Dolomites.