As our annual Walk With Love goes virtual, I am inviting friends and family from across the country to join me by walking, running, or jogging on May 17—and I hope you will too. The decision to take our longstanding in-person Pacific Palisades, California, 5K virtual is the right choice from a public health perspective. In fact, making this event digital-only could actually turn out so well that we will decide to do more of our events this way in the future, making them accessible to a greater number of people.
It’s easy to think of this as a loss. But there are actually many benefits. Moving events online can reduce costs and carbon footprints and make attendance accessible to a wider audience. In 2018, Coachella’s YouTube livestream brought Beyoncé’s Homecoming to more than 41 million people in more than 232 countries, rather than just the hundreds of thousands in attendance. Virtual events still sound a little futuristic, but they’ve been happening since 1993 when the world’s first livestream brought us nail-biting webcam footage of a coffee maker in mid-drip. The streaming pot brewed up millions of views. It makes me feel even more connected to my community, despite the miles between us. We at Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research look forward to engaging supporters from across the world in this new virtual format. And we’re excited that, for the first time, our Walk With Love will be joined by our global research teams in Guadalajara, Mexico and Madrid, Spain.
I plan on walking with Team Desert Love in my Rancho Mirage, California, neighborhood. I’ll be joined locally by friends (from six feet away) and virtually by family and friends all over the U.S. I invite you to form a team, walk on your own, or join Team Desert Love to end breast cancer! Register at www.walkwithlove.org.
