The Ben Raemers Foundation catches up with Louie Lopez to skateboard and see his daily routine. He also discusses the Suicide First Aid Lite training he completed with the foundation.
The Ben Raemers Foundation is a charity organization that was created in 2019 after the death of professional skateboarder Ben Raemers, who took his own life at the age of 28.
The foundation aims to raise awareness of mental health issues and suicide prevention within the skateboarding community. It provides a platform and safe spaces for people to talk about mental health within the context of the skateboarding world, breaking down fears, improving knowledge, and changing preconceptions and misgivings around mental health stigma and taboos.
The foundation welcomes all ages, genders, and backgrounds to be part of making skateboarding a suicide-safe community.
Its objectives include enabling the skateboarding community to develop the skills and tools needed to support each other to understand and address mental health, creating social media content to raise awareness of mental health issues, making films highlighting skaters’ personal journeys in mental health, and delivering suicide prevention training to skate teams and crews, managers, professional skateboarders, photographers, and skate shops across the globe.