The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | March 2007
| The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | March 2007 |
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High school mountaineer Evan Jacobsen dreamed up Summit7, a nonprofit to raise funds for Habitat and other house-building charities around the world.
Evan Jacobsen--a freshman at Orange County, Calif.'s San Clemente High School--is in the process of doing both. At his prompting, he and his parents, Don and Edie, have set up an international nonprofit named Summit7 to raise funds for housing projects around the world. Evan first started hiking and camping in the Boy Scouts; his father became an avid climber in 2000, and Evan remembers being captivated by stories of his mountaineering adventures. It wasn't long before Evan was asking to tag along. One of Evan's first climbs took him to Russia, a trip that would change his life. "In Russia, I saw a poverty that I had never seen before," Evan recalls. "Poor children begging at the airport, Soviet apartment blocs that had been damaged by flooding and remained uninhabitable. I just wanted to help these people." Through church and school, Evan's older sisters had traveled to Russia and Mexico to build houses. "I thought it was my chance to do something," he says. "Maybe I could make a difference by raising money to help build homes in the places I wanted to climb." And so Summit7 was born, an effort that aims to raise awareness of and financially benefit Habitat for Humanity, The Fuller Center for Housing and other international house-building charities in Tanzania, Russia, Nepal, Australia, Argentina and the United States. Additionally, Summit7 supports the study of global environmental issues through the International Arctic Research Center, located in Antarctica. The Jacobsens run the nonprofit--Don, an accountant and owner of elderly care homes in the Southern California area, calls it "almost a part-time job"--and cover all administrative and trip costs. That way, 100 percent of donations received through the Web site, www.summit7.org, go directly to the designated organizations. "That's one thing Evan and I wanted to promise," says Don. The family chose Habitat as a beneficiary after an Internet search, Don explains, and after realizing that the organization's affiliates "were pretty much everywhere that we climb--except for Antarctica." Summit7 recently donated nearly $5,000 to Habitat Tanzania, and Evan presented the check in person. His visit only stoked his desire to make a difference. "If you look at my photo galleries on Summit7's Web site," he says, "there are pictures of my visit to Habitat for Humanity Tanzania, pictures of me with kids. And it's quite sad if you look at it--pick which one probably will not live to see their 16th birthday because of malaria and bad living conditions. Which others will join them? People need that information. I mean, who wouldn't want to help them? "I'm still moving forward with climbing the seven summits and being the youngest person to climb the seven summits," he continues. "But I think what I want is to bring attention and to inform everyone-and to help people get out of these awful conditions." To that end, Evan is brainstorming a way to get other climbers involved, to expand Summit7 to their communities as well. "A lot of people put limitations on their children, by saying, 'Oh, you can't do this' or 'you could never do that,'" Don says. "I don't want to ever tell him he can't do something. If he wants to start something up to help people, we want to be supportive and encourage anything he tries to do. "You know, I had climbed in these places before, and--to be honest--it never really hit me. It took having Evan with me, hearing his perspective. It's heartbreaking to see the conditions that some people are forced to live in. To not want to do something to help them, I think, is unconscionable. So we're trying to learn how to do that." (return to main story) |
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