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FINDING PEACE THROUGH CLIMBING
THE STORY OF ClimbAID Founded in 2016, ClimbAID seeks to support communities affected by war, poverty, and displacement. Their mission is to bring the joy of climbing to these communities and to use climbing to promote inclusion, mental health, and personal development. ClimbAID also aspires to raise awareness of social injustice and environmental issues within – and beyond – the climbing community. ClimbAID currently has three established projects. In Switzerland, the MaXi Family project uses climbing to help integrate asylum seekers. They currently have 10 different chapters across the country and they manage a bouldering wall in Zurich’s Stadionbrache city park. Gyms that partner with ClimbAID allow the group to climb and use rental equipment for free. Some of them even offer a “solidarity pass” to asylum seekers who get into climbing regularly and can’t afford to pay the full fee. In Lebanon, more than 2,000 children and young people have participated in ClimbAID’s “Climbing for Peace” project since it launched in 2017, with their signature mobile climbing wall “A Rolling Rock”. Think of it as the climb-
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er’s equivalent to a food truck, delivering the joy of climbing right to the children who need it most.
the community rallied against the far-right by putting on concerts and fighting discriminatory political initiatives.
Most recently, they’ve turned their attention to the Greek capital of Athens, where they’ve started an initiative called “Pame Pano!” (Greek for “Let’s get up!”). This project strives to support unaccompanied minor asylum seekers who reside in asylum shelters in the city. The young people living here now have the opportunity to go climbing at ClimbAID’s partner gyms in Athens.
Beat went on to do a commercial apprenticeship in a small regional bank and later studied sociology, psychology, and political science. Despite always having been critical of globalized capitalism, he found himself working in the banking industry for over a decade. As time went on, he felt in conflict with the lack of morals and ethics connected to his line of work. Once he hit the nine-year mark at Deutsche Bank, he felt the gap had become too big. “In 2015, I quit my bank job without having any plans for the future and I just went traveling.”
ClimbAID’s founder, Beat Baggenstos, was raised in the Swiss Canton of Aargau. As a teenager in the 90s, he saw firsthand the influx of refugees escaping the Yugoslav wars. He looks back on this experience as being a pivotal moment in his life, as it was the first time he saw injustice and felt a political and social drive to do something. Not everyone in his town and the surrounding villages welcomed the refugees, which became evident when far-right groups and neo-Nazis began coming out of the woodwork. In protest against rising anti-refugee sentiment,
“I was first introduced to climbing by some friends at a local bouldering gym during my time in the corporate world. I loved it immediately, and at that time, my life was lacking a healthy outlet. I even quit smoking soon after I started climbing! When I left my job and took off traveling, I went to Argentina and Chile before heading to Mexico, and then Ethiopia. One thing that I especially began to love
Photo: ClimbAID / Jameson Schultz
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Photo : Climb
AID / A d
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Climbing session at an educational center for child labor victims, Saadnayel, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon
