We made it to New York. Spark steps challenge 2023 completed!

As you may have read in my previous post, in March we set out on a rather ambitious challenge to walk from the Spark office in Central London to the Statue of Liberty in New York City. I’m really pleased to report that we made it – with 30 members of the team clocking in a whopping 7,954,456 steps (without a big yellow taxi in sight).

Cathy emerged victorious after walking more than 518,000 steps. As we smashed through our target of 6,938,000 steps, this meant Cathy could nominate a charity to receive a donation from Spark. We’ve now sent £700 to Give Directly – a nonprofit that gives cash directly to people living in poverty to afford them the dignity to choose how to improve their lives.

Cathy said: “I love the ethos of GiveDirectly as it treats people with respect, allowing them to assess and meet their own needs. The money will go to people that really need it, so I feel like it will make a big impact.”

It was a closely fought contest, with Michelle almost hitting half a million steps just behind Cathy, followed by Alice, Ana and Jon. I found myself questioning my life choices at times during the month as I replaced some tube journeys with plenty of ambitious walks, but was still not able to seriously bother the front runners.

It was great to see colleagues logging steps while they were away on holidays – including Oli who just happened to be in the real NYC during the challenge. From travelling over the Brooklyn Bridge to heading out for a dog walk or the school run, our grand total came together from all different kinds of activities.

Speaking with Cathy, I got the sense that walking helped open up more time for herself, carving out time for things like listening to podcasts which would previously fall by the wayside. In today’s busy and always connected world, this really shows the power of walking – not only for exercise, but also as a mechanism to take time for ourselves.

Stay tuned for more exciting challenges from the Spark team. In the meantime, you can read about our bake off raising money for Macmillan here and our World Blood Donor Day event here.