by Lauren Kent
Today, the word “extreme” is in its prime. An enthusiastic epithet tacked on to every kind of sport, practice or cultural innovation, we now have extreme kayaking, extreme dating and extreme makeovers. Videos are extreme, as are fitness clubs and eating competitions. The world has caught on to desiring the far end of the spectrum in every facet of our daily lives; we like pushing the envelope. We are extreme junkies.
Which is why I will not shy away from adding “extreme” to another term, one which for the most part has remained encased in an antiquated sense of solemn duty and responsibility: charity, the age-old practice of giving. The methods used to give have remained the same over centuries: you can give your time, or your money, for a cause. Whether you wish to volunteer at a soup kitchen or reach for your wallet when the donation plate comes around, it’s pretty much all the same—what is evolving is the other side, the incentives, what is motivating people to give. Telethons, silent auctions, private, sign-the-check-and-hand-it-over donations; it’s all passé, over. It’s the age of the Extreme Charity.
“I think the world of just donating is dead,” says James Chippendale, co-founder of the Love Hope Strength Foundation and leader of the Dallas chapter. “Just writing a check to a charity, that world is gone. These days I think it’s important that people have an experience that ties them to the charity. They feel like they are members, part of the group… I don’t think you get that from a black tie fundraiser paying 1000 dollars a plate.”
These binding “experiences” have already been in practice through events like the Komen “Race for the Cure” or Lance Armstrong’s “Armstrong Challenge,” encouraging philanthropy to step out of the stuffy banquet hall and into the streets to raise money. What the Love Hope Strength Foundation does is take this idea and expand on it, adding distance, amplitude and altitude. Members of the LHSF “Army,” volunteers ranging from cancer survivors to rock stars to adrenaline junkies, travel to far corners of the globe, trek up daunting elevations like Everest and Machu Picchu, plug in and perform rock concerts at the base camps all in the name of fighting cancer. Their mission is simple: building one cancer center in every country, one concert at a time. And after three years and 15 countries under their belt, there are no signs of slowing.
“We like the idea of giving people something for their money; the trek, concert, the adventure,” Chippendale says. “We want the experience to resonate within everyone involved. If you’re going to spend money on a cause, why not get something for it?” This mentality creates a sort of circular profit system: everyone, from the beneficiaries to the benefactors, receives something vital, life-changing.
Chippendale will be the first to tell you he wasn’t always the patron saint of compassion. A young, attractive CEO of a growing entertainment insurance company, he was usually surrounded by big names and bigger egos, rarely given opportunities to wrestle with humility. Then he got the news no one is prepared for: cancer.
“I wasn’t necessarily a bad person before cancer, but I was overly confident, I was partying, just taking, taking,” admits Chippendale. “I think life gives you messages, saying, ‘Hey, you’re going down the wrong path,’ tugging on your sleeve. And when that doesn’t work, life will give you a fist in the face and knock the shit out of you. I don’t listen to the tugs, I needed the fist. I knew this self-absorbed lifestyle had to change.”
Chippendale was granted a second lease on life thanks to a bone marrow donor in Germany named Klaus, with whom he has since forged a family-like bond. After fighting and surviving his battle with Leukemia, Chippendale was ready to share his experience with others, but there was a problem: his passion was there, but he couldn’t seem to find the right vehicle that upheld his beliefs in the cause.
“Research never resonated with me,” explains Chippendale. “So many billions of dollars tossed into this vat of science and research money. For me, it was more important to see some direct results.”
Chippendale was working for a bone marrow transplant center in 2006 when he was introduced to Mark Peters, who was going through his third round of Leukemia at the time. Peters, frontman of the Welsh rock band The Alarm, was visiting Texas to play SXSW and was looking for some good doctors in the area. Chippendale went further than that, helping him find the best Leukemia physicians, set up appointments for second and third opinions, and verifying Peters’ doctor in Wales was following correct protocol in his diagnosing and treatment. That summer, while visiting Peters in Wales, Chippendale began brainstorming ways to leverage his contacts in the music business to raise money for charity. They both were frustrated with the lack of foundations focused on treatment rather than research, and they both agreed that nothing so far had had the right “vibe.”
“Mike and I were standing on this cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, looking out to the coast of Ireland, and this little village below,” remembers Chippendale. “That was the moment we said, ‘We have got to do something on our own.’ We went down to the village to this chapel where [Peters’] recording studio is, I remember I picked up this shirt, and it says ‘Love Hope Strength’ on it. I said this is it, we are going to name our charity this. We want to be able to give everyone the same opportunities we had. Money, connections, heath insurance; we have the best chance for survival, when there are people all over the world who deserve this same chance that we do.”
It was soon after that EVEREST ROCKS became the foundation’s first event, a representation of the duo’s climb through cancer. They saw the potential in the combination between the healing powers of music and the challenge of the trek. “It kind of just happened,” admits Chippendale. “We found producers, other cancer survivors, artists. We just thought, yeah, we can pull off a concert at 19,000 feet. That’s sort of our motto: We can make it happen.”
Everest may have just happened, but the Love Hope Strength project was anything but smooth sailing. Chippendale poured all of his funds into the idea, maxing out credit cards and taking out substantial loans along the way. As he puts it, it was a “ground-up, shoestring, beg, borrow and steal” scenario. “It was painful, I was stressed, tired, doubting everything I was doing,” explains Chippendale. “Basically, I leveraged myself. But I believed we were on to something special. No one was doing anything similar to what we wanted to do.” Sponsors, executives, bankers—there was a sea of people telling Chippendale he could not do what it was he set out to do. In fact, there was only one real group of die-hard supporters: musicians. This creative collective saw just what was there: a wild-hair scheme that just might revolutionize the way the world thinks about charity.
“There was this completely bonkers idea of going to every base camp for gigs,” recalls Glenn Tilbrook of the band Squeeze. He is speaking inside a Dallas recording studio, working on a song for the foundation and having just gotten off Mt. Kilimanjaro for the latest LHSF project. “I found it and still find it impossible not to be inspired, to be so in awe. I’ve never felt that way about anything before.” This February, artists such as Cy Curnin of The Fixx and Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats will visit Tilbrook’s London studio to record an album benefitting LHS, which will serve as the soundtrack for the Love Hope Strength documentary, featuring footage from base camp events, bone marrow drives and more.
To officially announce the LHSF project in the US, the team set up a concert on the top of the Empire State Building in 2007, a feat which had never before been attempted. EMPIRE ROCKS was formed.
“It was definitely a challenge,” says Chippendale. Once permission was finally granted to have a concert on the observation deck, a massive storm blew through the day of the show, grounding many attendees’ planes. Yet, with a stroke of luck, all the musicians made it, and the gift shop of the Empire State building was emptied out to accommodate the event. “We didn’t get a lot of PR for it, to be honest, but it taught us that we could do it.”
Since then, from Kansas to Katmandu—literally—Love Hope Strength has been making an impact, throwing concerts and growing both at home and abroad. The foundation has raised funds to build mobile cancer centers in Peru, Tanzania and Nepal, promoting the kind of care Chippendale and Peters feel lucky to have received. It has also held bone marrow drives at festivals like Austin City Limits and Bonnaroo, and is working tirelessly to lobby Parliament in the United Kingdom to have bone marrow donor laws changed to be the same as the US (the maximum age of a donor is set at 40 in the UK, and donors must get a blood screening before registering, making the process more difficult.) If they succeed, this could mean hundreds of thousands more donors for the global database.
So far, the LHSF has 16 marquis events scheduled for 2010, and the momentum is building. They will throw a concert in Geneva on World Cancer Day in February, featuring an A-list artist. There will be a cross-country motorcycle race, a visit to Lollapalooza and a brand new base camp visited and rocked on Mt. Fuji. And amidst all the high-octane, high-altitude experiences and entertainment, treatment centers will be built in third world countries, new bone marrow donors will be registered, and lives will be saved.
“We all want the same things: happiness, health and security,” says Chippendale. “It doesn’t matter if you’re German or Iraqi, we all want the same basic needs met. That’s the thing that really sits with me, that really makes the biggest impression on me, is that we are all the same…That’s part of the reason our charity is global. Why not? It’s a global issue.”
On the wrist of James Chippendale is an intricate, black tattoo. Designed by a guide in Nepal, the tattoo reads “Love Hope Strength” in Sanskrit, an appropriate representation of his company’s global view. For Chippendale, the tattoo means that and so much more: it represents a series of uphill battles, of low odds and lower expectations of success, and, most importantly, the grace and glory of winning the summit.
For more information or to learn how to get involved, visit www.lovehopestrength.org
