Jay Walkers: Year One Impact

At This Is My Brave, we have made storytelling on and off the stage a priority. Why? Because we want to do whatever we can to accelerate the achievement of our vision of living in a world where we won’t have to call it “brave” for talking openly about mental illness, we’ll simply call it talking.

If we can make this vision a reality, we will eliminate so much unnecessary suffering and loss of life. Our Jay Walkers Challenge was an integral part of that plan, and it did not disappoint.

From the enthusiastic flurry of registrations we saw in late August, it became clear to us that there are so many like-minded individuals who share this vision.

We want to extend our deepest gratitude to each and every one of the participants in our first annual Jay Walkers Campaign. We are so impressed by your commitment to this challenge and to our mission – to break down the stigma of mental illness and suicide and to start conversations that will let others who may be suffering know that they are not alone.

Our Impact

In honor of Jay and others who have lost their lives to suicide, Jay Walkers walked the walk:

  • 19 teams achieved their goal of completing 800,000 steps this month.
  • 132 Jay Walkers logged over 100,000 steps on their own.
  • 30 of those individuals achieved over 300,000 steps.
  • 150 Jay Walkers accomplished the goal of taking an average of 2,200 steps each day.

To promote awareness about suicide prevention, Jay Walkers talked the talk:

  • You started conversations about suicide with friends, family and colleagues.
  • You posted about the challenge on your social media.
  • You shared suicide prevention resources with others.

We are grateful for the support of Hot Topic, whose generous $25K sponsorship made it possible for Jay Walkers to be a free event for all! Beyond that, we received nearly $5,000 in donations from the Jay Walkers community!

See you next year!

You can be certain that these gifts will help support the important mission of This Is My Brave. Storytelling saves lives and your efforts – in fundraising and being a Jay Walker – are critical to the lifesaving work of This Is My Brave. We can’t wait for Jay Walkers 2023!

Resources

If you or someone you know needs help, reach out 24/7 to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 988 or using chat services at suicidepreventionlifeline.org to connect to a trained crisis counselor.

You can also get crisis text support via the Crisis Text Line by texting STORY to 741741.

For additional help, please visit our resource page.