Hanson celebrates five years of the Take The Walk campaign
This year, Hanson will celebrate the five-year anniversary of their Take The Walk charity campaign.
In 2007, brothers Isaac, now 31, Taylor, 29, and Zac, 26, started Take The Walk as a way to help those affected by extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS. Last week, they talked to Yahoo! Canada Music about their efforts, why it is important to participate and what the future has in store or the campaign.
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"The whole idea is to create an action that spawns more action," Taylor said. "The interesting thing about the campaign is that we actually give a dollar for every person that volunteers to do a walk. So, that dollar is our own commitment to the cause and then we encourage other people to donate as well and it's all specifically going to tangible things."
In five years, Hanson has had more than 50,710 individuals join them in their efforts and organized or taken walks to build schools, dig clean water wells, provide shoes and increase access to medication and medical treatment. They also support organizations such as Free the Children and TOMS Shoes by joining fans on one of their mile long barefoot walks.
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The creation of the campaign came during a time when Hanson was faced with leaving their major recording label, Island Def Jam, and starting their own independent label, 3CG Records. A time that Taylor says helped them recognize their unique opportunity.
"What we did with Take The Walk was had a dynamic career shift and a moment where we had a personal experience and we were able to crystallize a point of view," he said. "We have an awesome platform, which [we can use] to connect the real issues that are going on in the world today, and HIV/AIDS is specifically one that's striking our generation's young people, [and] will hopefully build [a] bridge for the future."
Looking ahead, the brothers hope to incorporate social media into their movement, saying, "We would like to make it more fluid for people because we started the campaign in 2007 and things have changed a lot technologically since then. We want to integrate mobile, the web, check-in's and location [mapping.]"
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Even though the technology might change, the message remains the same. "We want to show people how to do it, we don't want to tell people, we want to say, 'Let's go, let's do this, come with us,' Taylor said. "The impact has been amazing of how many people we've been able to share in this effort with and it's growing every day."
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