Juan Mann and the Free Hugs Campain

I want to share with you a real story of a young man who calls himself Juan Mann and how by giving free hugs to other people created an impact in the world much greater than most politicians would ever be able to achieve.

The story began in London when Juan was going through a difficult personal time, his parents got divorced, his fiancé left him, he dropped out from college and now he just returned to Australia with a little bit of money. Everything was the absolute opposite to what he wanted for his life. As he describes on his website: “I’d been living in London when my world turned upside down and I’d had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.” Juan wanted the same, someone out there waiting for him happy to see him, smiling, someone to give him a hug.

Juan just knew that what he’d been doing so far wasn’t working because he wasn’t happy, he was miserable and didn’t talk to anyone for six months. He was this recluse, and it just wasn’t working, and then he realized he needed to do something different, to do the exact opposite of what he was doing.

Juan decided he was going to talk to everyone to try and make someone else smile so that he would cheer himself up. He came up with an idea and thought that all he needed was a sign, a very funny sign that would make someone else happy but he wasn’t sure what exactly to put on his sign, it wasn’t clear until a couple of weeks later some stranger hugged him at a party and on a sort of eureka moment said to himself “you know what? I’m going to do this”.
So he got some cardboard and a marker and made a simple sign and on June 30, 2004 headed to the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city, the Pitt St Mall in central Sydney. He got there and held his sign up high, with the words “Free Hugs” on both sides.

Mann once said on an interview that on his way to the to the Mall he was expecting the worst, he thought that he was going to get arrested, mugged, and every worst possible situation imaginable. Juan told the reporter “I thought it was going to be pretty bad, so I, I’d left my wallet and phone in a locker somewhere and called a friend to tell him you can have my CD’s if I don’t come back.”

Finally he made it to the Mall and at first nothing happened. The first 15 minutes he stood there people were just laughing and walking by, and he started thinking to give it about an hour to see how it goes and if nothing happened, he was going to try something else, in that moment an old woman stopped and tapped him on the shoulder and told him that she needed a hug. She was a little lady so Juan got down on one knee and they put their arms around each other and share a warm hug. The old woman told Juan “You know my daughter died a year ago today and her dog died this morning. It’s just a really tough day. You’ve really brightened up my day. You gave me a reason to smile.” And she kept her smile while she was walking away.

This event gave Juan an incredible good feeling, a sort of certainty that he was on the right path towards something really special, by then he knew he had made the right decision going to the Mall that day.

On his second week giving free hugs there was a guy who came up to Juan crying, he said he was on the top of a building and was going to jump when he saw Juan down there carrying his sign and made him think that maybe there was some hope in the world. He came down but wouldn’t hug Juan, he was crying and just said “You’re doing a good thing, you’ve cheered me up.” A few weeks later the guy came back but this time he just stood there watching everyone else participating with Juan giving free hugs. He told Juan how since that day things changed things for him.

The days were going by and the number of people Juan was hugging was rapidly increasing, others were joining him giving free hugs as well, it was a frenzy of huggers, hug distributors they were, until one day the police told Juan to stop because he didn’t have a public liability insurance worth $25 million for his actions.

Juan tried to convince the authorities that his campaign should be allowed to continue without the insurance. He started collecting signatures as part of a public petition to attempt defeat the prohibition. His petition reached and submitted 10,000 signatures and was allowed to continue giving free hugs.

An amazing side of Juan’s story is how he achieved world popularity thanks to a music video on YouTube, this happened because shortly after beginning to give free hugs Juan Mann became friends with Shimon Moore, the lead singer for the a local band named “Sick Puppies”, and over a two-month period in late 2004 Moore recorded video footage of Juan giving hugs and the people who had joined him. Moore and his band moved to Los Angeles in March 2005 and nothing was immediately done with the footage. Meanwhile Mann continued his campaign throughout 2005 and 2006 by appearing in Pitt St Mall in Sydney most Thursday afternoons.

In mid 2006 Mann’s grandmother died, and in consolation Moore made the music video using the footage he had shot in 2004 to send to Mann as a gift, stating in an interview that, “I sent it to him on a disc as a present and I wrote down ‘This is who you are’.” The video was later uploaded onto YouTube where it is now one of the most viewed videos on the site, with over 51 million views as of October 2009.

On October 30, 2006, Mann was invited by Oprah Winfrey to appear on her show Oprah after her producer’s doctor saw the Free Hugs video on YouTube. Juan Mann made an appearance outside her studio that morning, offering free hugs to the crowd waiting to see the taping of that day’s episode. Oprah’s camera crews caught several people in the audience hugging Mann as the morning progressed.

Since then Juan Mann has traveled the world spreading his message, he even published a book. Juan had started a revolution of goodwill, like a chain reaction of huggers around the world, what he had created is such a powerful example of what a simple act of kindness can generate, not only just a simple hug that can considerably boost your happiness level but also a worldwide movement.

It certainly looks like everybody is enjoying the free hugs, this has a very profound significance, physically and spiritually speaking, as Juan says: “Deep down we’re all pretty good. We’re all nice. Give you a chance and everyone’s fine”.

By Rolando Ponce de Leon

Sources: abc.net (Australia) Andrew Denton, FreeHugsCampaing.org, Wikipedia.