Kevin Jorgeson - Partnership скачать в хорошем качестве

Kevin Jorgeson - Partnership

In climbing, choosing your climbing partner is almost sacred. Your partner quite literally has your life in their hands. “If you're going to be able to realize what you're capable of on the rock, your mind can't be doubting if the rope is going to pull taught when you fall, you have to be free to just do your climbing,” Jorgeson says. “That only comes with absolute trust in your partner.” So, how do you know when you’ve found the right partner? Jorgeson looks for two key factors. First, he says, “The key to a good partnership is putting the objective over your individual success.” Good partners place the objective above their own ego. A commitment to the objective includes a clearly aligned sense of purpose, as well as a commitment to the often long and challenging process to achieve the objective. Second, good partners are complimentary. Jorgeson recalls that he and Caldwell were complementary. “We got really lucky in that we discovered not by design, but by accident, that our personalities and our climbing, complement each other really, really well. I brought this laser focus from bouldering, and photographic memory for sequences and holds. Caldwell has been climbing on a El Cap for so long that he brings intuition and confidence that comes from experience. He’s more of an optimist, and I’m more of a pragmatist. In these ways, we balanced each other out.” These two elements of partnership are as relevant off the rock as they are on the rock. Jorgeson has seen this play out in his Santa Rosa climbing gym Session, as well as his nonprofit 1climb. 1climb has an audacious mission: to get 100,000 kids climbing and to make climbing more inclusive. Jorgeson says, "Often the only way that people get introduced to climbing is if there’s a climbing gym in their community and if they can afford to go there. If those two things aren't true, you are never going to experience this sport. So, I decided to break down the cost barrier and the proximity barrier.” In an attempt to breakdown the cost barrier and the proximity barrier, they needed to think strategically. Rather than building a big gym in the suburbs and trying to get kids from the inner city to visit, they decided to bring the wall to their neighborhoods. It became obvious that they needed a partner to make that happen at scale. Jorgeson says, “How do you go about introducing 100,000 kids to climbing? I settled on the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. They are the perfect partner because they have the built-in infrastructure of 4,500 clubs, and they serve more than 4 million kids a year for low or no cost." They then built introductory climbing walls in Boys & Girls Clubs across the country. This partnership eliminated both the cost and proximity barrier. Through this partnership, many kids will try climbing and hopefully enjoy it. Maybe some kids will love it and want to pursue climbing further. For those kids, each 1climb project has added a third partner, the local climbing gym that must be within a 15-minute drive from the Boys & Girls Club. This connection allows the climbing gym to contribute their expertise and to the Boys & Girls Club. Additionally, "it connects the kids and it gives them a pathway so that if climbing stirs something in them, they have the community support and the gym to help take that to the next level," Jorgeson says. This unique three-party partnership has the potential to shape the next generation of climbing.