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FINDING PEACE THROUGH CLIMBING The story of ClimbAID

A Rolling Rock

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 climber’s equivalent to a food truck, delivering the joy of climbing right to the children who need it most.

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.

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, the community rallied against the far-right by putting on concerts and fighting discriminatory political initiatives.

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.”

“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

about the climbing community during this time was the inclusivity. The local and international climbers I met in these places were really warm and welcoming. Yet on this trip, I was reminded that, sadly, climbing remains the reserve of a privileged few. In all of these countries there’s a section of town and a segment of society that you don’t see or interact with as a visiting climber. Prior to this, I had done trips solely for the sake of traveling, like backpacking from Istanbul to Damascus by bus. The way I interacted with my surroundings and the people on these types of trips was completely different from my experience as a traveling climber. This trip made me realize how big the barrier to entry can be with climbing and gave me the idea of trying to change that. I thought that opening the sport up to more people would help me to resolve my feelings of conflict.”

Beat’s travels in 2016 coincided with the pinnacle of the refugee crisis in Europe. “I had thought about going to Turkey to volunteer, but in the end I found an organization in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley that accepted me, so I decided to go there. On the first phone call I told them that I’d like to do something with climbing. I had read up on climbing therapy and I could really relate. Climbing had helped my own mental health and had given my life a new sense of purpose. After working with this NGO in Lebanon, I soon realized that bringing climbing to refugees living in the Bekaa Valley wouldn’t be as easy as I first thought. Like today, many refugees didn’t have valid papers. This made passing the many military checkpoints on the way to the main climbing spots a risky endeavor.”

Today, Lebanon has a population of about 7 million people, and one quarter of that population are refugees mostly from neighboring Syria and Palestine. This makes Lebanon the country with the highest number of refugees per capita worldwide. The worsening of the economic situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic and has driven large parts of the population into extreme poverty. As a result, child labor and child marriage are on the rise again. Many are suffering from mental disorders such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety without any access to adequate mental health support.

Based on these challenging circumstances faced by refugees and the clear need for healthy activity among the communities in the Bekaa Valley, Beat came up with the idea of having a mobile climbing wall that could move from venue to venue. Rather than bring the refugees to the mountains, why not take the mountain to the valley? Once again, however, this proved easier said than done. “I was

very naive back then and underestimated how hard it would be to raise the funds. Getting it off the ground while in Lebanon was next to impossible. In the end, I went back to Switzerland and restarted and revamped a boulder project with asylum seekers at Minimum Bouldering Gym in Zurich. Taking over this project gave me a previously established network of volunteers, and that network was enthusiastic about doing something in Lebanon as well.”

“Within only a few months, we managed to raise 54,000 Swiss francs (nearly 50,000 euros) for the Lebanon project, which allowed us to buy the vehicle and build it in Switzerland. I had wanted to build everything in Lebanon, but I was unable to find the right vehicle or materials. We built and registered everything in Switzerland and then had it shipped to Lebanon.”

Once Beat and his team got the mobile wall to Lebanon and started their program, they wanted to make sure that people could climb in the long term. “If we get someone into climbing, we want to make sure that they can keep climbing. We don’t want that opportunity to disappear. In addition to having this mobile wall, we knew we wanted to have a permanent structure as soon as possible.” In 2019, ClimbAID was able to lock down a location where they now carry out the majority of their climbing sessions. “After the explosion in the Beirut harbor, we were given temporary special permission to hold sessions with the mobile wall in the harbor district. It was the right thing to do, because the kids needed an outlet and a way of finding a little joy through those difficult times. We still get people contacting us and asking when we’re coming back! Unfortunately, due to COVID and other reasons, we haven’t been able to, which is a real bummer. We’d love to have a permanent climbing wall project in Beirut in the future as well.”

Despite geopolitical struggles and the challenges presented by COVID, ClimbAID has remained stable and true to their mission. In Switzerland, the MaXi project now has over 110 volunteers, and some climbing sessions are now run by former participants who came through the program. Beat says the participant base is diverse and that sometimes they have 40-year-olds and 11-year-olds in the same session! Over the last year, COVID and a sudden shortage of international volunteers accelerated efforts by ClimbAID in Lebanon to build a team of staff and volunteers drawn from the local community. Former ClimbAID participants have jumped at the opportunity

Annual MaXi Family Boulder Weekend in the Swiss Murg Valley Hula hoop climbing at The ARC in Taanayel, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

“BEYOND ANY SPECIFIC PROJECT, WE HOPE THAT WE CAN… INSPIRE MORE CLIMBERS TO SHARE THEIR PASSION AND PRIVILEGES WITH THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST.“

Photo: ClimbAID / Adrian Schurter

to get more involved with the organization and are now frequently helping to run the sessions. Beat and his team have now started arranging workshops for the volunteers so they can take over more responsibilities and learn and grow as facilitators.

Looking to the future, Beat hopes that ClimbAID can secure funding to invest into their growing communities in Switzerland, Lebanon, and Greece. Lebanon’s current economic crisis means that the need for safe spaces and psychosocial support is only getting bigger. “We’d really like to have a proper bouldering gym in the Bekaa Valley one day, perhaps combined with a youth center. There’s a severe lack of public spaces for young people to express themselves and develop their potential. A corner to sit in with a library, a classroom to teach English and other topics, a workshop with tools for making things like climbing holds and volumes … Beyond any specific project, we hope that we can keep raising awareness of the refugee cause within the Visit www.climbaid.org to learn more about ClimbAID and their current projects.

BEAT BAGGENSTOS

Born: 1982 in Aarau, Switzerland Background: Studied Sociology at University of Zurich. Previously worked in Business Development. Founder and Managing Director of ClimbAID.

Mohammad rocking the 2nd Bekaa Bouldering Competition in 2019

Photo: ClimbAID/ Jameson Schultz Climbing minefield

MaXi Family Boulder Weekend 2020 Salam sending her project in Qab Elias, Lebanon

Photo: ClimbAID / Adriana Stöhr

Photo: ClimbAID / Adrian Schurter Photo: Jameson Schultz

It’s about progression.

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