The Petzl Foundation: on the Internet and close to our communities!
The Petzl Foundation now has a new website (http://www.petzl.com/fondation). For the occasion, we met with the organization's general secretary, Olivier Moret, to discuss the Foundation and its projects.
September 8 2015
Indoor and Outdoor Climbing
What is the goal of this new version of the Petzl Foundation's website?
The purpose of the site is to highlight projects and allow the general public to better understand our focus and our action areas. The site serves as a tool to showcase our projects with those who are interested in the vertical world. It is almost like our digital annual report.
The old site was created in 2009, and had aged quite a bit in both design and user-friendliness. When the company decided to completely redesign its website, we asked for the Foundation website to be consistent. This was not just a simple update; we completely reworked the content and how the website is organized in order to make it as easy as possible to access all available information. All studies and videos are now easy to access through dedicated pages. This also means that we completely redesigned how to navigate within the site, which is available in both English and French.
What are the Petzl Foundation's primary missions?
Our goal is to usefully serve the mountain and vertical access communities. As part of Petzl's core areas of expertise, we coordinate our actions in three main areas with non-profit organizations:
- environmental conservation,
- accident prevention and risk management training,
- supporting scientific research.
Of course we also focus our attention on the work-at-height professional community!
How does the Foundation function?
The Foundation receives an average annual endowment of 350,000 €. In 2014, 75% of that money went directly to projects, and forty-five projects received support.
Who runs the Foundation?
The Foundation is operationally managed by Stéphane Lozach’meur, who has been in charge of projects since 2007, and I, who became the general secretary in March 2014.
The strategic directives are decided by eleven board members (the majority who do not work for Petzl) and the president, Paul Petzl. They are all passionate about and committed to the mountains and vertical activities.
The Petzl Foundation team.
Could you please describe a Foundation project?
A "Foundation" project must first of all have a strong connection to the mountains or to vertical activities. It should be useful to the ecosystem in which Petzl operates. Some projects are brought to us by project initiators. We then provide them with financial support, equipment donations, project management expertise, or with time and expertise from Petzl employees (voluntary service).
The Foundation also commits to leading a certain number of projects on its own. For example, renovating the Aigle hut. This was the first time a private entity took part in the debate, insisting on the necessity to preserve and pass down a piece of mountaineering heritage from generation to generation. Another example includes the problematic approach to the Gouter hut on Mt. Blanc's standard route. Once again, the Foundation provided its contribution, conducting a study to expose the real danger of the Gouter couloir and other studies on rock fall frequency, as well as evaluating the different options available to limit the risk on this section of the route, which we consider to be unacceptably dangerous. The Foundation can provide objective elements to feed the discussion and reduce the objective risks without disfiguring the mountains. We are a catalyst capable of bringing the mountain community together on major issues of general interest..
What are the feature projects for this year?
Our major project involves accidents in mountain sports. Since 2012, we have provided support to a group of researchers at the University of Lyon I, which published a report at the end of 2014 on mountain accidents in Europe and throughout the world. We would like to continue to explore this interesting line of research by analyzing both accidents and near-misses in the mountains. We plan to offer climbers, mountaineers, and other mountain enthusiasts the chance to talk about their near-misses in a module integrated into the community website, camptocamp.org. Another new project this year is to become more heavily involved with Mountain Wilderness on a variety of projects.
Olivier, to finish, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm 43 years old. I earned an education in geography and journalism, and spent fifteen years at Montagnes Magazine as assistant chief editor, and then worked on several projects for the French Alpine Club (FFCAM). In addition, I am a certified mountain leader, a certified climbing instructor, and enjoy mountaineering in my spare time…
Stéphane Lozach'meur and Olivier Moret work on the Foundation's annual report.
Access the Petzl Foundation website
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