Everyone at the Encephalitis Society is walking on air after discovering we have been nominated in the Charity Times Awards 2018.

We have been shortlisted in the Fundraising Technology Award for our Brain Walk mobile phone App which was the centrepiece of our World Encephalitis Day campaign earlier this year.

The winner will be announced at the Park Plaza Hotel, London, on October 3.

We now hope to a repeat the success of last year which saw us named Charity of the Year (with an income under £500,000) by the Charity Times.

Phillippa Chapman, Acting Chief Executive of the Encephalitis Society, said:

This is such wonderful news and really the cherry on the top for BrainWalk. We were all delighted with how BrainWalk was received by our members in the run-up to World Encephalitis Day and we are now hoping this nomination will add to the enthusiasm for BrainWalk as we approach February 22 next year. We would, of course, like to say thank you to The Distance for their expertise in developing BrainWalk and to our funders whose generosity ensured our vision came true.

BrainWalk was launched by our Ambassador Rebecca Adlington at the House of Lords in January and counted the number of steps that users took on a daily basis as well as the number of games they played on the App.

Its overall aim was to get people get people moving, get people thinking and reduce the often overwhelming sense of isolation that can follow an acquired brain injury like encephalitis.

Our hope was to have everyone come together and walk the 52.8 million steps it takes to walk around the globe over a four week period.

Instead, amazingly, we walked a total of 114,858,479 steps and played 416,793 brain teaser games while the App had sessions in 43 different countries.

Phillippa added:

BrainWalk - and an extra surprise or two - will be returning for World Encephalitis Day on February 22, 2019. We hope everyone will join us and help us to make it an even bigger success.