The Love Hope Strength Story
Led by volunteers, fuelled by music and camaraderie, and propelled by a desire to give back and create positive change, Love Hope Strength strives to provide those it serves with a lifeline.
The Love Hope Strength Foundations (‘Love Hope Strength’ or LHS) operate in the USA, UK and Australia. Love Hope Strength helps save and change lives one concert, one step, one helping hand at a time through partnering with cancer care specialists across the globe, and offering support when families affected by cancer need it most.
As well as developing its own informal support networks and activities, Love Hope Strength funds additional resources and special projects in cancer centres, on treatment units and for community services across the globe through its partnerships with hospitals and not-for-profit organisations. Key partners include: NHS charities in the UK; healthcare alliances for musicians, for example HAAM, in the USA; and TLM children’s cancer service in the Muhimbili National Hospital, Tanzania; blood cancer charity DKMS; the World Cancer Research Fund and the Union for International Cancer Control.
Love Hope Strength was co-founded in 2006 by the internationally acclaimed musician and healthcare campaigner Mike Peters after he was diagnosed with leukaemia, his fellow musician and wife Jules, who has since undergone treatment for breast cancer, and their friend James Chippendale who had received a life saving bone marrow transplant.
With the support of Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, The Stranglers, and a host of other leading figures in the music industry, Love Hope Strength has registered more than 250,000 people onto blood stem cell registries through its ‘Get On The List’ partnership with DKMS. Incredibly, over 4,500 of those who have registered with Love Hope Strength have been identified as potentially life saving matches, giving hope to those with a blood cancer who would otherwise be denied the chance of life. This number of potentially life saving matches continues to grow every month.
Love Hope Strength regularly supports the team at the Children’s Cancer Unit at Muhimbili Hospital in Dar Es Salaam and its outreach services across Tanzania, by funding salary, equipment and chemotherapy costs. Love Hope Strength’s support helped establish the Children’s Cancer Unit in 2013, and the Unit’s two wards and hostel are called ‘Tumaini, Upendo, Ujasiri’, Swahili for Love, Hope and Strength.
Love Hope Strength supports the World Cancer Research Fund’s education programmes, helping young people in underprivileged communities reduce the risks of cancer.
Through its longstanding partnership with the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), Love Hope Strength helps to fund additional peer support, training, education and advocacy for new doctors and nurses in Africa and Asia with the UICC’s sponsorship programme. Love Hope Strength grants have specifically supported training and support for clinical teams serving communities affected by conflict.
Love Hope Strength established it’s ‘Rocks’ hike series in 2007. Over the years, thousands of people, including prominent musicians, have taken part in hikes, organised in the name of Love Hope Strength to raise money but also to raise people’s spirits during and post cancer treatment, and to raise awareness of the value of ‘walking and talking’. LHS has even hosted the world’s highest concert on land at 18,536 feet on Mt. Everest, witnessed by over 3 million people on the internet and by many more via the MTV commissioned documentary ‘Everest Rocks’. These extraordinary adventures have positively impacted some of the most vulnerable communities in the world, with money raised helping to fund better cancer facilities. Everest Rocks, for example, helped fund the first ever mammography machine at Bhaktapur Cancer Center in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Over £1million has been raised in the name of LHS through the ‘Rocks’ hikes:
2007
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
Empire State Building Rocks (USA)
Everest Rocks (Nepal)
2008
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
Peru Rocks (Peru)
2009
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
Kilimanjaro Rocks (Tanzania)
Colorado Rocks (USA)
Rhondda Rocks (UK)
2010
Mount Fuji Rocks (Japan)
Colorado Rocks (USA)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
Rhuddlan Rocks (UK)
Rhondda Rocks (UK)
2011
Kauai Rocks (USA)
Avebury Rocks (UK)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2012
Avebury Rocks 2 (UK)
Vail Rocks
Everest Rocks 2 (Nepal)
Ben Nevis Rocks (UK)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2013
Vail Rocks (USA)
Ben Nevis Rocks (UK)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2014
Vail Rocks (USA)
Ben Nevis Rocks (UK)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2015
Red Rocks Rocks (USA)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
Ben Nevis Rocks (UK)
Kilimanjaro Rocks 2 (Tanzania)
2016
Red Rocks Rocks (USA)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2017
By Your Side Trek (UK)
Snowdon Rocks (UK)
2018
Zip World Rocks (UK)
Rock the Canyons (USA)
2019
Zip World Rocks (UK)
Iceland Rocks (Iceland)
2020
LHS Virtual Snowdonia Marathon (UK)
2021
Offa’s Dyke Rocks (UK)
2022
LHS Beach Hike 1 (UK)
LHS Beach Hike 2 (UK)
Sahara Rocks (Morocco)
2023
Rock Central Park (USA)
Snowdon Rocks Weekender (UK)
Rock the Alps (France, Switzerland)
Rockin’ Austin (USA)
Rock the Piers (USA)
2024
El Camino Rocks (Spain)
“Love Hope Strength’s mission, and values are all encapsulated within its name. Whether it’s a hike with Mike or volunteering at a gig, LHS does good for others and it’s also good for your soul.”
Steve, LHS Supporter
