Rope-for-Hope

“Dude, you’re on.” Those three words engraved a smile on my face and induced a panic in my heart.

Earlier this year an email circulated around the office from our friends at Make-A-Wish Canada about their most current initiative, Rope-For-Hope. Adrenaline-seeking philanthropists were invited to rappel down the side of Toronto’s City Hall. A follow up email from a colleague that read “Alen will do it” went out which warranted a response of “Hell yeah, I’ll do it.” My dear friend, colleague, and resident Oracle, said he’d do it too. Of course he would. He’s nuts and this is right in his wheelhouse. With the excitement of a pre-pubescent boy I filled out my form but stopped abruptly when I saw how much money I had to raise in order to participate – $1,500 bucks. I had little to no faith that I could raise that much money in such a short period of time. Before I was able to tell I was out, he had already raised half.

That’s the kind of guy is. He’s passionate and he cares about others more than himself. This isn’t the first time he’s given his time, money and effort to help others. As a co-creator of HoHoTO, has raised upwards of $100K for the Daily Bread Food Bank, connected hundreds of people and brought awareness to a cause bigger than himself.

Shortly after raising the money for Rope-For-Hope, was diagnosed with cancer, and asked me to take his place.

The day before I rappelled I thought, this isn’t right; it’s just not the same without him there. He needs to experience this with me. So, I did the next best thing I could think of. I bought a Go-Pro camera, opened up iMovie for the very first time and made a little video of the whole thing.

When he saw the video from his bed in the ICU his eyes lit up and with all his might he blurted out “Fuckin’ awesome”.

No. You are fucking awesome.

This is just one story about how eager is to help others. Now, needs our help. I know these are tough times but please click on the “donate” button and contribute whatever you can. Every little bit helps a lot.