We use a top-down approach, working with Westerners going over to Kilimanjaro to educate them on proper porter treatment. Our website, www.hec.org, includes porter treatment guidelines for trekkers and our office in Moshi, opened in January, conducts tourist education and makes clothing available for tour operators to outfit their porters. We loan shoes, socks, hats, and water-resistant jackets and pants for a refundable deposit and also provide empowerment classes for the local people, including English language, first-aid, and AIDS awareness classes.

You'll see guys going up in flip flops, cotton trousers, lightweight cotton shirts. I saw a guy who had an old shag carpet cut into a hat because he didn't have anything else to wear. The main barrier is cost—the larger companies have been really responsible and have been equipping their porters properly for years. But it's a cut-throat industry for the local Tanzanian guides who don't lead enough climbs to stock all the gear on site. That's why we provide the means for them to have free access to gear.

Without a doubt positive, at least if you're looking at it financially, which is how the local population would look at it. There are very few other opportunities for income around Kilimanjaro. Porters could go risk their lives working in the mines for much less money or they can try to find work on the mountain—the unemployment rate in Tanzania is outrageously high. The trekking industry brings dollars to the developing mountain regions of the world, and we want to make sure that it develops sustainably. Sometimes porters are only getting paid two, three dollars a day if they're getting paid at all. And that's poor compared to the amount of money that's being brought in.

Both areas have a supply and demand problem—too many porters looking for too few jobs—that leads to mistreatment and low wages. The difference is that in Nepal, there are fewer legal regulations and trekkers hire porters themselves. In Nepal, it's up to them to decide what's reasonable. On Kilimanjaro, there are laws in place, but they're not always followed. Guides are mandatory, so people leave porter management up to their guides and think that everything will be taken care of. But it takes more enforcement on the part of climbers to make sure they're treated properly.

Climbers should always look over their porters and make sure that they have the right gear. When you're starting out, ask if all the porters have tents, then ask to see them. Inspect their gear as you would your own. We ask that when you're tipping your porters, divide the tips yourself and make sure that they're being handed out to each individual porter so they get what they deserve. Also what happens is that some guides will send down porters early, loading up the other porters with extra gear. Legally that's not supposed to occur, so clients should count the number of porters throughout the trip. These guides are paid a certain amount, so the fewer porters they have, the less they have to pay out. If they can make due with fewer porters carrying extremely heavy loads they'll do so.

No. That's a common misconception that stems from Nepal where Sherpa porters have been known to carry 80-pound loads at altitude [Sherpas have lived at high altitudes in the Himalayas long enough to evolve greater lung capacity and more efficient use of oxygen]. Kilimanjaro trekkers think their porters will also be immune to the cold and the altitude, but they're not. In Africa, the porters are lowland farmers who aren't any better at acclimatizing than trekkers. No one in Tanzania is naturally adjusted to the cold and altitude because no one lives up on the mountain. The Chagga tribe lives at the base of the mountain—maybe at a few thousand feet, but no one's living at 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) like in the Himalaya.