Having scaled the highest peaks on seven continents, mountaineer Ken Noguchi's latest project could prove to be one of his toughest challenges yet.

He is struggling to raise funds to renovate a run-down school in Nepal and bring hope to children deprived of an education due to poverty.

Despite his fame, Noguchi, 47, was having a hard time reaching his goal because of the novel coronavirus, so he turned to a crowdfunding platform to meet the target.

During a trip last year to Nepal, where he cut his teeth scaling Himalayan peaks, Noguchi felt despondent at the dilapidated state of a 40-year-old elementary school building. It had no lighting and walls had collapsed in places.

The encounter occurred while he was delivering 60 “randoseru” backpacks to children at the Shree Mahendra Janasahayog Basic School in spring 2019. The desks and seats in the gloomy classrooms were also in a terrible state.

Noguchi was inspired to take action after a youngster from Nepal told him that “local children cannot afford to hold any expectations for their futures due to poverty.” He determined to restore “hope to the school.” 

But that proved harder than he had anticipated after the novel coronavirus pandemic started ravaging the world, so he recently started a crowdfunding drive to attain his goal.

“We need help from as many people as possible so the school can function where children grow healthily and have dreams for the future,” Noguchi said. “Even small donations are welcome, please help us.”

In Japan, Noguchi is also renowned for his efforts to help remove tons of trash left behind by people climbing Mount Fuji each year. In September 2014, he met Thapa Godar Upakar, now 28, a Nepalese student at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts in Okayama Prefecture.

Upakar had arrived by night bus from the faraway prefecture to assist in the clean-up of 3,776-meter-high Mount Fuji. During one of their many conversations, Upakar mentioned the circumstances facing the Shree Mahendra Janasahayog elementary school.

Upakar had studied there as a child. The school is situated in a mountainous area of a suburb of Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city.

In 2006, Noguchi established the Manaslu fund to build a dormitory for children at another elementary school in Sama, Nepal, where he was involved in cleanup work around one of the base camps in Manaslu.

Since then, Noguchi has focused on trying to help Nepalese children gain a better education. His decision in 2011 to present used randoseru from Komoro in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture, where he serves as an environment ambassador, was one such endeavor.

Hearing Upakar’s story, Noguchi realized that children attending the Shree Mahendra Janasahayog elementary school faced the same challenges as those posed at Sama.

Because there are so many impoverished families in Nepal who cannot afford to send their children to school, Upakar’s father, the principal of the Shree Mahendra Janasahayog elementary school, toured each home to ask the parents to allow their children to attend classes.

The principal distributed school meals for those who cannot afford that simple luxury, paying for them out of his own pocket.

Shortly after Noguchi visited the school with the randoseru, he got together with Upakar to proceed with the renovation project.

“I wanted to create an environment where students are excited about learning at school,” he said.

Traditions and practices from Japanese schools were also introduced, such as installing a handwashing station and getting children to sweep out classrooms by themselves.

With a construction cost of 10 million yen ($96,700), the renovation work that started in June is now mostly completed.

Only the sports grounds and a few other areas remain as they were. The sluggish economy brought on by the pandemic suddenly rendered it difficult to solicit funds.

To overcome the difficulty, Noguchi turned to the nonprofit group Peak Aid, which he heads, to raise more funds to help Nepal.

A crowdfunding site was opened by the group at (https://camp-fire.jp/projects/view/325637) in October. The campaign will continue through the end of November.