This weekend I attended the AIDS walk organized by Cascade Aids Project. The event took place at Pioneer Square, and I was really impressed by the turnout and the excitement around the Square on October 11. It was a cold day, but this did not deter people from attending the event. Families, company groups and college groups took part. People were walking in teams, and each team had their own t-shirt that represented their group. There were many walkers who were HIV-positive and they dressed in red t-shirts. We were told that more that 10,000 people participated in the walk. I have to give a round of applause to the organizers for managing to attract such a huge turnout. There was live music for the people who did not want to walk and for those that had arrived late after walkers had left.
One thing that really impressed me is that many people come out to walk with their dogs. This added to the number of walkers!!! I think this was really exciting.
The other thing I realized is that there was a real experience of competing, with individual donor competitions and group donor competitions. The winners were announced at the end of the event. There are a lot of things we can learn from such events and I hope to help implement the best ones for our upcoming Walk for Water 2010 to make sure we achieve our goal of having 1000 walkers.
