Alpine Initiatives is a group of charitable humans doing helpful things for other humans. They also happen to be a members of the snowsports community. Currently, AI is helping to build a second community home in Kenya. Their mission statement:
Alpine Initiatives was created through our passion for the mountains and desire to have a positive impact on the world we live in. We strive to inspire others to contribute, collaborate and initiate. Through positive social, ecological, and agricultural interactions, we work to create and nurture sustainable environments and communities.
The following conversation with JP Auclair took place October 29th, 2009. If you don’t know who JP Auclair is, you’re out of touch. Read this to remedy that. As for the interview, I hope it encourages you to make differences in your life that make positive differences in the world. It did for me. – Mike Berard
Mike Berard: Can you explain to us what Alpine Initiatives is all about?
JP Auclair, Alpine Initiatives: It’s funny, we’re just in the process of trying to put it down as best we can into words and we’ve been saying since we started that basically its main goal is as a service and a platform for the snow and mountain sport community to get together and work on different projects. It’s as basic as that. It could be any sort of general life improving project. It could be environmental or humanitarian, and the first project that we are working on has turned out to be humanitarian. However we don’t lock ourselves into that. We are willing to work on whatever.
MB: Ok, so it’s not just the African focus then?
JP: No, that just happened naturally. It started off, to give you a quick history, with my buddy Mikey (Hovey), who I had met at guide school three years ago in Haines. I was taking the course for knowledge and he was becoming a heli guide, and we met in the class and hit it off. We got along super well so we started hanging out and when we were talking, we both kind of wanted to get involved, to do something. We were super naïve, super clumsy, and didn’t really know how to get started. The opportunity came along in Kenya, where Mikey’s mom had been involved already. So we decided to start asking questions from them: what their needs were and what we could help provide. So that’s how we got involved with Kenya, but hopefully in the future we haven’t just locked ourselves into this deal, though we actually are committed to building another community home there after this first one is completed.
Auclair, far from snow. Deep in dirt.
MB: Can you tell us a little more about the community home and what specifically you guys are doing in Kenya?
JP: Well, that’s a home that had been started in 2005, and mostly financed by a guy from London who has a construction design company. And it needed a kitchen, though he was working on the main building, which was all that he had the budget for. So when Mikey talked to his mom and her partners we were excited, because we figured we could take care of the garden, the kitchen, the dining room, and everything that was needed for the home to be completed, and that was our job. We just came along and hopped on the project, and committed to take care of all of these things. Over the last year we raised just over $30,000 and paid for the kitchen. The dining room is about to be built, hopefully before mid-December, and that was our role, our part of it, plus the landscaping and gardening as well.
MB: Cool, so do you have a background in humanitarian efforts and social change or is this your first project, and why did you decide to get involved?
JP: It is my first project, I have zero experience, and I only had the desire. I wanted to do something but I didn’t know how. The first step is getting out there and talking about it. All of the time spent stuck in a tram, basically.
MB: That’s interesting, because in the few things I’ve ever been involved with that were charity or trying to help people out, it was the same thing – I’ve had an idea, and then notice that all it takes is for you to take charge and say “Hey, we’ve got to do something,” and all of a sudden people get on board and donate money, or services, or help…
JP: Totally.
MB: Did a lot of people step up when you finally made the decision to get involved?
JP: It’s funny because the first thing was the planning of one trip. And we would go and do one, and help out, and we hadn’t thought any further than that. So in the beginning it was just Mikey and I who were still shy about committing to it, just thinking “we totally should, we totally should…” and by the time we had booked tickets in May, (we were planning on going in the fall) I was like, “I don’t know, I don’t know what kind of commitments I have, in the fall it’s movie premieres…” and all of this stuff, and he was like, “well, if you can’t come, you can’t come…” and so he started asking other people, and all of a sudden he’s like, “this guy’s coming, and this guy’s going too…” and I was like, “if everyone’s going, they’re not going without me! I’m going!”
Heli-ski guide and humanitarian Mikey Hovey
MB: So, Mikey is a heli guide, and you are a pro skier, and Chad (Fleischer) was on the U.S. ski team. Why was the snow sports community connection important to you, or was that just your circle of influence that you had at your disposal to make change?
JP: Yeah man, it’s a huge community of super awesome people, lots of people with tons of talent and skills that they can share. It’s just the network and the resources that were available within a network that I knew super well, having been in it for over ten years now. All of that was just sitting there, and I figured that if we could just get it going, get started, that I was going to be able to have everything that I needed. And that’s how it’s been so far. Everything that we have done has been through volunteers. The website was done by Iannick B., who used to be a pro skier and is now a programmer, so he helped me put that together. The writing, everything, every aspect of it has been volunteers. It’s amazing the amount of work that got done with no money, you know?
MB: Yeah! It’s inspirational, eh?
JP: It’s awesome. The most inspirational part of all of that is how we didn’t know what we were doing, and just by going out there and trying you see that it’s doable. If we can do it then anyone really can.
Lisa Benjamin gets her hands dirty.
MB: Yeah, for sure! So what’s next? Do you have any plans for the next project, and how do you come to that decision?
JP: So we’ve already done two different trips because we like to go there in person. That’s how we can assess everything best, by being there. The most important part of the whole experience is the human relationships and the interaction that happens with these projects. This time we are going to keep working with them, because the ski season is just around the corner and we have our other lives to take care of also. The crew there is going to finish everything without us and the home should be officially open in December. There is already kids there now, but there is going to more kids and everything is going to have to be finished before then. There is a dining hall missing now, so they are eating in the leisure room. So we still need to raise a bit more money, to finish the dining hall which is our short term goal, and after that we are committed to building a second one, about a 20-minute drive away from the one we’ve already built.
We are open to all sorts of projects because we want to keep doing different things as we go, so that we learn more and discover more things throughout the world.
I mean, we could do our next project in India, or South America. It could be humanitarian, or environmental. Something that is going to educate us in the process. But we figure that we have the Kenyan project on lockdown. We know all of the people there, we love the community and we are very efficient compared to when we first started a year and a half ago, so we might as well take advantage since the second (home) will be much easier than the first one. We’ve learned so much from the first one.
MB: The Community home has a school in it – what will be the plan going forward from here? Who do you leave the home in hands of after you leave?
JP: There is no school, just a home. A lot of people think that there is a school because of some of the pictures I have put up on the blog. Those are from when we picked up the kids at school. A lot of them are going to boarding school, so for part of the year they don’t stay at the home. But the point of the house is so that when they aren’t there they have a home to go to that is theirs, instead of just going to random different families, or wherever they can find someone to take care of them between school sessions and stuff. When we aren’t at the home, there are house mothers that are hired, and cooks from the communities. Sometimes it is extended families of the orphans, Uncles and Aunts, and basically the whole home is supported by the community.
MB: It’s very cool that you are doing this. I feel that it’s too easy for pro athletes, especially for those of us in the snow sports industry, which is a sheltered, relatively wealthy area of society, to ignore this stuff, so it’s really cool that you guys have provided an avenue for change.
JP: It’s been a lot of fun.
MB: Thanks again JP.
For more info on Alpine Initiatives visit the blog or, to help make a difference in the world, donate to the cause HERE.
JP at Retallack Catskiing, B.C..