While that project raised approximately $1,500 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation — an organization, Ward and Zizka agreed, that is trustworthy and dependable as far as making the most out of donated dollars — more recently, the Mountain Movement helped initiate a program that Jasperites may have seen taking place in their local restaurants and coffee shops. Together with HIV West Yellowhead, the Jasper-based non-profit society that aims to promote positive, healthy lifestyles and assist and educate people in regards to HIV AIDS and other sexuality, relationship and disease prevention issues, The Mountain Movement recently took part in a Servers Against AIDS campaign. That project encouraged servers to donate their tips during one day of work; in Jasper alone, thanks to HIV West Yellowhead’s famous volunteer recruiters, over $5,000 dollars was raised, to be split between The Mountain Movement, i.e., the Stephen Lewis Foundation, and HIV West Yellowhead.

“This is the perfect project, where half of the money goes to local causes and half to more global issues,” Zizka said. “That’s what we’re all about.”

With the Mountain Movement’s mandate of assisting the Stephen Lewis Foundation do its work, Ward said it’s not always easy to get people to donate. When it’s a cause where they can’t necessarily see the net benefits, people sometimes hesitate. That may have been the case when Zizka did his winter campaign, an incredible 1,500 kilometre trek from tip to tip of New Zealand’s south island. It constituted 44 days of solo hiking from the southeast corner to the northeast corner, something that’s never been done before, but the journey only raised $1,500.

“Maybe it’s because it wasn’t in Canada,” Ward, who coordinated the fund-raising from Ottawa, speculated.

But the expedition still allowed the two to get the word out, which is just as important as the money, they agreed. “Every time somebody asked me ‘why are you doing this?’ it opened the door,” Zizka explained.

Now the pair, who are gearing up for their third Servers Against AIDS day August 24 and who have also brought another awareness campaign, Artists Against AIDS, to Bow Lake, are hoping the door might be open for an even more ambitious project. The two want to build Servers Against AIDS so that more communities, more regions and eventually, the entire country, know about it.

“That’s the long term goal,” Ward said.

With so many spin-offs, so much potential to grow and the motivating factor of doing good for others while simultaneously pushing your own limits at its foundation, The Mountain Movement should be moving mountains before they know it.

I must recommend a book I have been reading this summer: 28 by Stephanie Nolen. The following is a review from the book's website.

From an internationally acclaimed journalist comes an extraordinary book that puts a human face on the AIDS crisis in Africa: twenty-eight vivid stories, one for each of the million Africans living with the virus.

For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every aspect of the pandemic, making them familiar to us in a way they never have been before. In the process, she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens.

In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-yearold Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the heroic efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or talking to Nelson Mandela and his wife about coming to terms with his own son's death from AIDS.

These stories reveal how HIV works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who can't get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds. Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind.

Please go to http://www.28stories.com to learn more.