It was a rainy day in Nashville. Outside was a crowd of fans excited for a show, but the group of fans there long before doors were gathered around the front of the Wildhorse Saloon. We were just on the other side of the door standing in the lobby, about to do what we had never done before and would ultimately do over 100 times in cities across the US and some international cities, with a lot of music fans, mostly in cities along our tours over the next several years. We were preparing a new idea, a series of one mile walks, barefoot to raise funds which could help combat extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS in areas of sub-Saharan Africa. At the heart of it all, we would begin a personal journey to unlock the potential of our bare feet. This journey of hundreds of miles ahead of us dubbed, ‘Take The Walk Campaign’ was never meant to be an end all, just a step in the right direction.

As I have shared in our Take The Walk Book, which chronicled the launch and pursuit of our campaign to fight extreme poverty and raise awareness about the overwhelming issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic in areas, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. The mission focused walk campaign was one that took on a life of its own and served a couple different parts. It was part awareness as a tool to amplify and highlight the issue which we were acutely aware of which was that the rampant spread of a preventable disease (HIV/AIDS) was wreaking havoc at a level never before seen and through providing access to affordable medicine and basic tools to combat poverty, at the very least to those who were given these resources, real change was possible.

The connection to this cause as I said was chronicled in the Take The Walk Book as well as previous blog about inconvenient callings, in part, had a strange origin that tied together some entrepreneurs in our home town who were working to provide technology to doctors aiding them in better serving pregnant mothers who were infected with this illness, a stark awareness of the growth of this disease globally and like so many at that time an inspiration to engage in this issue from leaders like  Bono with his inspiring dedication and advocacy to unlock new policies from the west around the crippling debt which was making transition to sustainability in the African region nearly impossible.

Those reasons sound like a mouthful, but in fact that larger than life mouthful of connections and global stats is in part why the deep conviction grew for me, to articulate with simplicity a call to action and mobilize a way for anyone to participate in the cause we were beginning to understand. The premise was to take a big series of issues which needed to be addressed and try and find a way to make participating in the cause, tangible, doable.

Things that make us stop: Global poverty, international politics, diseases which we don’t understand, lack of money or resources, negative news, apathy.

Things that make us start: A clear mission, a human picture of an issue, a tangible way we can help, a motivation and focused goal to work toward, empathy, inspiration.

The thing that struck me so much about the time visiting communities in South Africa and Mozambique and learning about the ongoing challenges across the continent was the fact that so many of the solutions came down to tangible needs which, if broken apart, could be provided by individuals as well. The power to create change could be felt and enacted if we could just put that message in the hands of others. As entertainers and artists with an audience, the most valuable thing I thought we could do would be to unlock the power of you.

The Take The Walk campaign began that day in Nashville and the model was then set out from that point forward. A one-mile walk, barefoot, set out from each venue on our tour.

So many in the Hanson.net community lead the charge so it is redundant to over explain, but the power of so many coming together to help us support this mission was really inspiring to me. This was more inspiring personally than I had anticipated.

Several unique elements had come together to make the mechanism of this walk campaign unique and as always, we were attempting to find ways to make a really ambitious idea happen, one step at a time. One of the elements that had come together and helped to define the campaign was the connection to a tangible item which helped us to communicate the issue of poverty. This element was a shoe. The now iconic and ubiquitous shoe company TOMS which was built by Blake Mycoskie had built some excitement and buzz around the simple idea of a new shoe company that donated a pair of shoes with each one he sold. This simple idea being so understandable and tangible really aligned with what I was hoping we could accomplish with TTW. Global poverty is overwhelming, but getting one pair of shoes for another person, that was an example of a tangible action that most anyone could contribute to.

I had reached out to Blake the founder a few months before without any introduction and before I knew it, we were sitting across the table having coffee and I was sharing with him the idea of Take The Walk. I told him we wanted to take TOMS on the tour with us and help sell shoes alongside the Walk effort, and we wanted to help reach the goal he had set out to sell / donate 50,000 pairs of shoes to kids in need. Our goal was to help him do that so we could put shoes on the feet of kids in need in South Africa. He said, yes, so, we had another partner.

The alignment with the walks for me was to try and show each person they could engage in a real action that could make a difference just by showing up. Of course funds needed to be raised from anyone who could donate and we had the TOMS shoes with us which anyone could purchase which made a direct impact on shoes for people in need but the most important idea (which was clearly one of an artist) was to show the actionable impact of showing up and DOING something instead of just asking people for money.

With this in mind we worked to select a key cause in five areas so anyone who walked with us could walk for a tangible cause that impacted poverty and HIV/AIDS issues and we dedicated $1 from every concert ticket sold so all our participants already had a way to know their engagement could direct at the very least that $1 to the cause.

The five causes, 1. Shoes (TOMS) 2. Clean Water 3. Medicine (purchasing HIV/AIDS anti-retroviral medicine for mothers with HIV to help prevent transmission to unborn children) 4. Education (building schools) and 5. Technology – at the time an innovative technology empowering communication for doctors and patients to aid in medical aid for women with HIV.

The little engine that could. That’s what we were going to enact. With cardboard cards that had one of the five causes and room for each walker to write down their name, we recruited many of the amazing street team leaders and helpers to register walk participants and we met at the front door ready to walk.

I remember that first walk. I was genuinely nervous in a new way. Performing music on stage was something we knew well, in fact I feel right at home on stage along with an instrument but speaking to a crowd about a cause and then embarking on these intimate walks was a new world. Additionally, we knew a lot of fans would join us early but we didn’t know how the idea would be received really. This idea of sharing a big cause with a mission to take on extreme poverty and then ask hundreds of people to take their shoes off and walk through a public street, there was no guarantee it would be received well. With that said, there was also a real tangible excitement to do something so fresh and engaging. If this did work, it would be incredible.

As we walked outside the energy was palpable. There was a feeling of excitement as the couple hundred gathered around us and looked with some hesitation at their place in line which had been held for hours beforehand. As the crowd moved in closer, I could tell there was a question about what was going to come next. Were we supposed to behave differently as a band and audience, were we going to chat, or chant, or do a rally? Everything was to be determined. Earlier in the 2000’s, something that came from our visits to colleges around the founding of the label and then the documentary screenings was something we called a college Ambush. This name might have never traveled outside of our internal team but the basic idea was a sort of semi-unsanctioned appearance on a campus to make positive scenes, mixed with some live acoustic performance and then a stump speech on the importance of independent music. We appeared at over 50 colleges sharing the documentary back in ’05 and had a lot of appearances, some of which felt like pure raw energy. Standing in front of the venue with megaphone in hand I could feel a similar spirit.

As was true to our dynamic between the brothers, they were more than happy to put me in front of the megaphone to figure out on the fly what was going to be said to this crowd and also, we were a good team. Zac with his phone or a digital camera (smartphones were still in their infancy years) and Ike was holding a sign or having a deep conversation with someone on the front row. Starting in that moment in Nashville the shape of our one-mile walks and the stump speech to share our conviction about this cause took form.

Are you ready to Walk? I belted out with a cheer of whooh’s in response. I began to share what we were really there to walk for.

I shared about the overwhelming stats surrounding millions of people living on less than a dollar a day particularly in communities in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique and other African nations. We shared about the rising growth of the HIV/AIDS crisis and how it was uniquely hitting young families and people of our generation and combined with extreme poverty and stigmas how this disease was setting the coming generation on a path of despair as young mothers and fathers died and left their children who were also born with this illness to be cared for by the grandparents or the state, or not at all.

These stats were new to some, but not too many. What was different in that little street speech was an invitation to do something different. We invited everyone to see their value. Let’s each see the power we have when we decide to focus on the impact on one person, one tangible action, one aspect of a solution. Looking around we had a couple hundred people there, the fact that each of those that day could contribute to medicine that could save a life that day (a 35-cent daily drug for pregnant mothers with HIV) or a pair of shoes, or access to clean water. This is what we focused on.

We did not have the solution, but we had some ideas, and some actions and the mission that day was to begin our journey.

The invitation to take shoes off was interesting. Because we have the most dedicated and incredible fans in the world, we saw the response right away ready to follow the path I laid out, but for a moment there were more than a few ‘oohs and eeks. “Really, take off our shoes?”. This was in fact the idea. By focusing on the simple tangible reality of being without shoes we could focus on the problem and the solution.

Think first about what a big deal it is to go without a basic item like shoes. You start to think about how you might hurt yourself, how your feet will be dirty or could get infected from a wound. All the questions come up even with this simple action. On the other side of the coin, there is something in the brain that feels and see’s this issue and is now trying to figure out how to solve it. What we talked about from that point on and throughout the campaign was all related to that tangible reality and in some cases the metaphor the shoeless foot presents.

“Instead of thinking about the overwhelming reality of the extreme poverty, think about the power of putting one pair of shoes on someone’s foot”. We could buy a pair of TOMS and know it would produce a pair of shoes. We could donate a few dollars and provide a weeks’ worth of medicine for a person. This is the way we get there.

As the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

After our first walk we came into the back of the venue. My feet were throbbing, and my heart was racing. I looked at the other guys, ‘this might be one of the best things we have ever done’ I said. We did not know if we could make a real impact that would change the world, but to stand with a few hundred real people, share the power of action for a cause and then to enact this one mile walk together felt like starting a new era. This spirit of impact, of partnership and of collaboration was one I was totally inspired by and I could see in the joyful faces of so many we were on to something.

Oh, we walked and we tested the bare feet of so many but from hot to cold, on hills, in parking lots, parks, college campus’s city centers and through some of the most iconic cities in mostly North America, we shared walks and we saw a movement grow.

The walk campaign evolved and grew over the coming years, but that first tour set the tone for a real impact. We focused on a few outcomes and one of the primary goals was simply shoes! In addition to buying medicine, helping start some clean water wells and developing a path to education with funding new schools we wanted to show a real goal was achieved with that first tour, we could help TOMS reach their next goal of 50,000 shoes.

Over the coming weeks and months, approximately 60 shows and sixty walks unfolded. We tested our feet and we set a new rhythm at venues in cities all over. Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Toronto and the list went on. These places tested our resolve but we saw something new in those miles, we saw a new alignment.

As we moved from city to city, many people joined for the first time and like so many amazing fans coming to many shows, we of course saw so many join mile after mile. As the walks went on, we waded into city centers and heard random passersby ask “what is going on”, I felt heartened when I would hear someone in our group pause and talk to the person on the street and heard them give a robust answer. Through this walk we moved to a new place. Yeah of course being a band, with many dedicated fans we know the connection and excitement was due to that established relationship but the emergence of the shared goal of this cause started to plant a new seed of connection. What Is true and what I always loved about our walks is the simple idea, nobody can walk for you. Just like the power of volunteering your time and your hands or your specific skill or influence, there is great power in engaging your time. I began to hear from others that they had decided to work for a non-profit, become a nurse, travel to do missions work in a third world country, or just start taking the time to do more in their neighborhood. All these outcomes were not known when we started. These new stories were unfolding, The Walk was continuing long after we finished the barefoot mile. We were walking the right direction.

The impact of the tour and the first series of walks was personally meaningful and it opened a new conversation with so many fans and new followers. It also achieved a significant series of milestones. One of the most meaningful, we contributed significantly to TOMS achieving their 50,000-shoe goal that year.

How many lives were impacted? Do we gauge it on the shoes donated to people in need? Do we know the impact of the thousands we purchased medicine for, the thousands impacted by the clean water wells we raised funds for over the coming years following that tour or the multiple schools we helped build? All of the tangible things we helped fund moved the lives of real people closer to hope, but it was not just the lives of those we were trying to bring resources too, hope goes both ways. Every walk we did there were at least a few that I know for a fact took the message home. ‘I can do something with my time, my talent, my resources”, “I don’t have to be a millionaire to change a life”. This might start to sound like an infomercial, but I have seen it. I have walked many miles in the snow and heat and on unforgiving pathways (Sayreville!) and I know many incredible people in this community who were right there with us. Those miles started something and I’m so grateful for each step.

We took a few big bites out of that elephant. We still have a long way to go, but I know for sure we started walking the right direction.

-TAYLOR H