Healing the scene $1 at a time: Luke Mahadeo

“How much do you give if you believe that everyone's like inherently priceless?”

— Luke Mahadeo

There was a time when Luke Mahadeo was a broke college student — a position in life that many young adults know all too well. 

“I had no income at all. The only income I had was whatever allowance I was getting from my parents, and funds from financial aid,” Luke shares candidly. “That went to buying food or books, essentials. Then whatever I had left over was what I was giving to HeartSupport — which usually ended up being about $1 a month, because the budget was tight, right? But the spirit behind it was like, ‘I want to feel connected to this thing deeper than just me.’”

That spirit was born through Luke’s deep investment in the metal scene and his strongly-held personal faith. As a big fan of metalcore mainstays like August Burns Red, Luke heard about HeartSupport early on when he listened to Jake Luhrs share about founding the movement, explaining clearly his vision to provide support for the hearts of the struggling. Luke was captivated.

He says, “It's super cool, trying to reach people through the metal scene and offer support for this super important thing called mental health. I'd never seen anybody else try to use their platform in their scene to do what Jake was doing. I was super down for that. Because I think a lot of people struggle, and they struggle bad. Sometimes all it takes is just someone listening to them.”

For Luke, he has always understood his Christian faith as a call to love the world. He immediately saw the ways that HeartSupport aligned with that calling.

“I want to love the world. I think one of the ways that I choose that to live that out is through an avenue like HeartSupport where it gives me an opportunity to really hunker down and listen to folks,” he offers, expanding on his personal vision for involvement in the organization. “Sometimes, man, you just need a friend.”

“If the world gets cold then why don't I build a fire?”

— “Enkindler,” Phinehas, Luke’s favorite band

Luke’s early involvement in HeartSupport revealed a community of people just like him: people who cared about mental health and each other. People who might not have a lot of money, but who had a ton of heart. Soon, he was watching a movement take flight. 

“What I saw was a group of folks where no one had a bunch of money, but everyone had a lot of time,” he recalls. “And everyone's got a lot of love to give. I think that was the most attractive thing to me: that everyone has got so much love to give, and they want to live out that love.”

He continues, “I've seen HeartSupport grow from like a small group of just six or seven people. I think the fact that it's grown as much as it has over these last 11 years is proof that it's working. This movement has got the longevity behind it where the mission has been the same for over a decade. That tells me that there's something incredibly real there.”

That mission has been the stabilizing force behind HeartSupport’s explosive growth: connecting metal fans to supportive relationships through the music they love. This year alone, that mission took a whole new form as HeartSupport’s YouTube achieved virality, passing 170,000 subscribers. In the comments of each video, there are hundreds of music fans looking for hope.

Those listeners are the reason why Luke has stuck around alongside HeartSupport, his ability to invest financially expanding well beyond $1 after graduation.

“Now, I'm a desktop support tech for a hedge fund here in New York City,” Luke explains. “My entire career has been in financial tech. I’ve always been a huge fan of tech, and I have managed to monetize my hobby, essentially.”

His generosity has continued to grow with the maturation of his career, only deepening his sense of urgency for the work HeartSupport is doing.

“I think that if you believe strongly enough in a cause, if you want the folks that are at the helm doing the things that you believe in to succeed? If they need some cash to get that done, then that's what we're here for,” he says frankly. “I think HeartSupport is for the kind of person that thinks that there should be more love in the world. This is where you need to be. It's the only place that I've seen outside of church where you've got complete strangers loving other strangers, inviting them to love other strangers.”

The way that an investment of love grows exponentially has been something Luke has witnessed as tried and true in over a decade of supporting this community-rich mental health nonprofit. He views it as essential to his own development as a person.

He says, “If there is someone I've never met before, who the only context and information that I have about them is what is what they're struggling with. How can I love that person through their struggle? Not just preach at them, but to show them and to demonstrate to them, ‘Listen: you've got someone that cares about you, and cares about you badly.’ How do I do that? I think HeartSupport has been instrumental in developing that part of me.”

Musing on his continued commitment to the work, Luke states, “The reason why I want to heal the scene is because HeartSupport seems to be the only organization that has the way to do it: to get folks together and have them all love each other. I don't think that there's any other way that we're going to heal the scene. In a world where where we've got nothing but hate and vitriol and division, it's love that binds us together. It's love that keeps us together. And I don't find any other organization pushing that message either tacitly or explicitly other than HeartSupport.”

Luke Mahadeo’s story proudly defies the notion that in order to have a big impact, you have to have a big bank account. For this metal fan, it was as simple as starting where he was, with what he had: in a college dorm room, holding a single dollar and a deep love for anyone around him who might be struggling. Those seemingly small beginnings have had a massive impact in spreading HeartSupport’s work.

Wherever you find yourself right now, if you want to join Luke in offering what you can to being that listening ear to people who desperately need a friend, you can start today with a gift as small as $1. You never know how that impact will grow.