The Encephalitis Society has a spring in its step after being rewarded with TWO leading industry awards for BrainWalk - our World Encephalitis Day smartphone App.

Along with The Distance, who developed BrainWalk, we were presented with a Gold Award in the Best Use of Digital by a Charity category at the Digital Impact Awards on Tuesday, October 16.

It follows hot on the heels of the Best Fundraising Technology award at the 2018 Charity Times Awards earlier in the month.

Photographs by Paul Wicks and submitted

BrainWalk was launched in January as part of our World Encephalitis Day campaign. 

We asked supporters to download the app to their smartphone and join us on a digital walk around the world to raise awareness of encephalitis.

As well as counting your daily steps, users could also contribute to the step total by playing brain teaser-style games.

Our hope was to get people moving and using their mental skills and also, crucially, to feel like part of a community, hopefully reducing any feelings of isolation that can accompany encephalitis. 

The target for the month-long campaign was 52 million steps - equivalent to walking around the world. 

Well, we smashed that target and then some and finished on 114,858,479 steps with an amazing 27 countries taking part.

And for anyone who feels they may have missed out on BrainWalk, fear not as our award-winning app will be making a return for World Encephalitis Day 2019.