WORLD CANCER DAY

À CHACUN SON EVEREST !
World Cancer Day

On the occasion of the World Cancer Day, Fusalp has chosen to support the À chacun son Everest ! association by offering 10% of the generated sales on fusalp.com to the Association from Friday 1 February to Monday 4 February 2019, midnight.*

À CHACUN SON EVEREST ! is an association that accompanies since 1994 women and children in remission of cancer to “healing better” by climbing “their personal Everest”, relying on the strength of the symbolic parallel between the difficulty of the ascent of a summit and that of the path to healing.

The entire stay for women and sick children is fully taken care of by the association. The association needs our support to keep accompanying more women and children each year to reach “their personal Everest”.  Thank you for your support and commitment to help À CHACUN SON EVEREST !

Meeting with Christine Janin, founder of À Chacun son Everest! Association

As a child, Christine Janin dreams of becoming a humanitarian doctor to travel and “save the world”. She becomes Doctor, but will never work in the city. As a young graduate, she combines two passions, medicine and sports, and sets off to climb Gasherbrum II in Pakistan as an expedition doctor. A decisive revelation for the future. On the 5th of October 1990, at the age of 33, Christine became the legend of mountaineering and the first French woman at the summit of Everest. “What I lived, I did not dream,” she says with disarming simplicity, “things just happened. I followed my intuition, made beautiful encounters, dared and everything was linked. I have never dreamed of going to Everest, but I am a competitor in the soul. When I commit myself, I make it happen ! “.

During fifteen years, Christine Janin connects expeditions and exploits. After having completed the climb to the highest summits of the 5 continents, the famous Top 7, the young woman makes a decisive encounter. Hélène Voisin (Director of the Trousseau Hospital School – Paris) offers her to come and tell her travels to hospitalized children. A heartbreaking experience that drew a crazy idea: take these sick children to the mountains.

The project is refined, the parallel between the encountered difficulties to conquer a summit and those experienced to overcome the disease and live his/her “after” become obvious. Her meeting with Professor André Baruchel (Head of Department of Hematological Pediatrics at the Saint-Louis Hospital – Paris) is decisive.

In 1994, Christine founded the À Chacun son Everest ! association with the mission to accompany a maximum of children with cancer or leukemia in the difficult stage of “after cancer”.  Helping them to get back on track with their lives finally gives meaning to endless past and future marches. Crossing the North Pole in 1997, Christine did it for them. New achievement : she will be the first woman in the world to reach the North Pole on foot.

In 2001, À Chacun son Everest! was set at the foot of Mont Blanc, in the famous Maison Vallot completely renovated and designed to meet the needs of children (an indoor climbing wall and an adventure course that come over the years to complete the installation).

Ten years later, the association opens its doors to women. A new step with adapted stays, which require the construction of a zen space for yoga, sophrology, meditation and massage. As Christine Janin explains, “these women arrive exhausted, in a state of hopelessness that I did not imagine. Breast cancer is too commonplace, as if it is a small cancer, while it put everything in question. The goal is to get the body in movement, to help them to make up their femininity too», she adds. “It is essential to make this second wind to overcome the illness appear, regain self-esteem and the desire to live. All these women have lived more than Everest. However, nothing is gained once the disease is over, once the peak is reached. Our goal is to support them in the descent, they regain the control of their bodies, regain the will to live. Everest has changed my life. In the same way that cancer changes a life. But we can give meaning to this test and transform it. Me, the children saved me; without them, like so many other mountaineers, I would surely have made of the summit too much.”

Christine Janin is an woman of heart to extraordinary journey, a lively and charming personality, who has the gift of highlighting the magic of life and our capacity for resilience.

It is the glittering eye of enthusiasm that she concludes our meeting with a sentence that sums up this extraordinary woman: “My life is intense, full of love, sometimes tiring, but what a joy to give back the desire to these women and children! ”

* Fusalp donates 10% of the H.T. generated sales from Friday 1 February to Monday 4 February 2019, midnight.*