We Carry Kevan started in 2016 as an experiment in travel and friendship. Some guys and I wanted to go to Europe, and everywhere we planned to visit wasn’t going to be wheelchair accessible. This would normally be a problem because I am in a wheelchair, but we decided to not let that stop us. Leaving my chair behind, they carried me in a special backpack for three weeks as we danced through the streets of Paris, hopped fences in the English countryside, and hiked an island 7 miles off the coast of Ireland.
Since then, we have spent the past six years as a nonprofit answering the two biggest questions we got from families who watched the adventure unfold: Where did you get this backpack? And where did you get these friends? The first question was easy. So far, we have distributed 800 backpacks to families in 35 countries, and that number keeps growing every day.
But people long for deeper connections, too—friendships that will say, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” So we build relationships with families who get backpacks, and we share our stories around the world to inspire others to be these kinds of friends. And most recently, we started a new video series called Who Are We, in which I interview the “We” of We Carry Kevan. I figured, who better to ask about friendship than my friends?
I had the honor of going for a walk with Jonathan Rogers and Doug McKelvey, as we discussed art and friendship and how the two practices cultivate one another. Check it out (and see if you spy Pete in the background, too), and many other interviews about different aspects and keys to deeper friendship.
Here is Part 1:
And here is Part 2: