We did it – and then some!

Five weeks ago, we launched our digital BrainWalk challenge for World Encephalitis Day with the aim of walking 52 million steps – the equivalent of walking around the world - by February 22.

Needless to say, we were quite nervous about how it would be received and whether we would achieve our ambitions.

Not least because it was a unique campaign and because smartphone App technology is not yet popular in the third sector (although we think it eventually will be).

We are proud to say that no other charity that we are aware of has developed an App like ours – an App which raises awareness, helps to keep your brain and body active, lessens isolation, builds confidence and accepts donations.

Of course it has been a learning curve for our team – none of us have ever helped develop or manage an App before – and there have been a few challenges which we quickly overcame.

Best of all though has been the reaction from you, our supporters and friends, which has just blown us all away over the past month.

Feedback has been generous, the interaction wonderful and the competition fierce with two teams battling it out at the top of the leaderboard for most of the last 35 days.

The results have been out of this world and our final figures are astounding:

Total Steps Walked: 114,858,479 (one hundred and 14 million, eight hundred and fifty eight thousand, four hundred and seventy nine steps)

Countries that took part: 27

Top Team BrainWalkers:

1. Team Eric Faulkner 26,435,494 steps

2. Max's Mighty Marchers 21,943,407 steps

3. Mind Your Step 2,479,004 steps

Top Individual BrainWalkers:

1. E Team Gal 4,616,082 steps

2. KoolKoala 4,598,390 steps

3. Gaspode 3,634,291 steps

Thank you to everyone who has taken part. We’ve have had a lot of fun over the past five weeks and we hope that you have had too!

Now we turn out attention to tomorrow – World Encephalitis Day – and we hope you will be wearing something #RED4WED and sharing your photos online and telling the world about encephalitis.