Fall Walk season looked a little different for our new statewide North Carolina Chapter.  For the first time ever, JDRF presented a unified national OneWalk, the largest T1D event in history!  For our chapter’s Walk in the Triangle region, this meant an opportunity for that community to participate in the Walk program both locally and nationally, with local challenges motivating our walkers and a big shared national goal – 1.6 million miles walked for the 1.6 million Americans who live with T1D – keeping everyone going!

131 Triangle teams (15 corporate, 10 school and 106 family) made up nearly 900 Walk participants (including 45 V1Ps who individually raised over $1,000 for their Walk teams).  These dedicated teams walked a collective 16,000+ miles and raised over $500,000 – half a million dollars! – to help cure T1D!  The Triangle’s success would not have been possible without its 3 Walk Chairs (Farah Nisler of Nature’s Twist and Chris Hobbs and Michael Romanus of South State Bank), along with 13 generous sponsors and some particularly inspiring teams.  High House Pediatric Dentistry sponsored a successful registration drive that helped to recruit 30 new teams.  Duke University had 3 teams that together raised over $12,000 and walked nearly 2,000 miles, with one of the Duke teams having 4 T1D athletes participating.  Novo Nordisk won the “Peeps” Award for having the most walkers registered (179 total); the “Spirit Award” went to Team Rachel’s Rally for promoting awareness of JDRF by winning the Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest; the “Above and Beyond Award” went to Stacey Shine for her passion and dedication for all things JDRF; the top family team was Team Trini/Martz Family and the top corporate team was Grace for Glen and Blake/Moffat.

Matt Williams, captain of the first year #Strongforever team, led his group to raise over $12,000 and walk over 3,000 miles.  He said, “During these tough times, our family was so motivated to participate in something that was worthwhile not only for our daughter but for the T1D community.  It was such a fun time for our friends, family, co-workers and neighbors to come together in raising money for T1D research while also walking over 3,000 miles in support of the JDRF fitness challenge.  We are inspired and full of hope for 2021 as we all work together for a world without T1D.”

We are grateful for corporate sponsors BD, South State Bank, Nature’s Twist, Novo Nordisk, Tandem Diabetes Care, High House Pediatric Dentistry, Moffat Pipe, Hendrick Southpoint, Insulet Corporation, Nocturnal Product Development, Lenovo, Baker Roofing and Baysix. And to all our Walkers, teams and supporters: THANK YOU for making this year’s virtual Triangle Walk so successful despite our distance!  We are inspired by YOU!