FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Steve Zimmerman
Alive Campaign
(512)-658-2295
AliveCampaign@gmail.com
http://www.AliveCampaign.org

Five College Students Prepare to Bike From Waco Texas to Anchorage Alaska for Suicide Prevention and Awareness Campaign

Waco, Texas, 12 December 2007
In order to show a friend, dealing with depression, that there is more to life than what meets the eye, five college students from of Baylor University, Justin Brown, Steve Zimmerman, Andi Nakasone, Kyle Ferguson, & Nathan Lloyd, will bike to Anchorage Alaska from Waco Texas in an effort to raise awareness about the issue of suicide and efforts to prevent suicide. This group, titled the Alive Campaign, plans to execute the bike ride sometime in early May 2008 from Fountain Mall on the Baylor University campus. The team hopes to make this work, primarily, through tools on the internet such as Facebook, where the team has rallied over 300,000 supporters(http://baylor.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5781429349&ref=mf),Myspace,YouTube,and its website(http://www.alivecampaign.org). The campaign just received non-profit status from office of the Texas Secretary of State and is currently pending approval of 501c3 status.

ABOUT ALIVE CAMPAIGN (written by Justin Brown):
“We sat looking at each other with blank stares; we couldn't believe what we were hearing. Our best friend venting his heart out, telling us how the night before he but a plastic bag over his head hoping that he could end it all. With our pointless dinner losing its taste, we sat there trying to reason with him. The same clichés that I think people crying out would hear, "you have so much to live for", "your lucky having friends care about you", but none of it seemed to work. We told him to get help but he refused saying "Life is pointless anyway, how can a God be so cruel." We looked at each other with our hearts beating in our chests, life pulsing in our veins and wanting to give him the same feeling.

It all started as a joke, I don't know who said it first. But in order to lighten up the mood one of us said, "You know if you’re going to kill yourself you might as well do something crazy." "Why don't you go to Colombia and burn down the drug fields, I mean the drug cartel will kill you anyways, so at least you can do something good for mankind." Our friend smiled a bit, but shook his head "That's not realistic." We looked at each other, and the guy across from me said "Well I mean you should stop by the Dean's office and fill up a giant water balloon and throw it at him, you would be the hero of the school." He laughed again, but again he said "That’s not realistic". Then I said, "Why isn't it? If you aren't afraid of death the world is open for you to do anything you want." I looked at my friends and I looked at him, his eyes looking down at his food. For the first time, it all became real.

We are the richest country in the world, but studies have shown we are the saddest, and most depressed. We are lonely with our riches, following the American Dream. Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, and repeat. The illusion that our lives have limits cause our massive dependency on drugs, on materialism, and lusts. We are a society with nothing new to give. This trek, this adventure to Alaska is to prove that humans don't have limits. You can do anything you set your mind to. Who says you need to go to college to be happy, who made it the law that you need to be rich. He was telling us that he had nothing to live for, so we gave him something to live for. So keep us in your prayers, and be ALIVE.”