The Borderline Walk on Sunday, May 29, 2016 – was a record breaker!
The fourth annual Borderline Walk took place Sunday, May 29, 2016, along the beautiful Sunnyside Boardwalk, Toronto. With a record 500+ walkers, the Borderline Walk is the largest walk of its kind for Borderline Personality Disorder awareness in the world and raised over $31,000 in pledges alone. A big THANK YOU to all those who participated and supported this walk, to our valued sponsors, and to all those countless Sashbear volunteers who worked so hard to make this event a success!
The walk is a symphony of families, people with lived experience, mental health providers, organizations, entertainers, mindfulness practitioners, and educators, Everyone is brought together as one, to share a mindful walk of awareness and celebrate that together we are making waves for those that struggle and their families. This year’s walk included music, speeches, a mindfulness bridge walk, mindfulness meditation on the beach, and awareness passport activities.
Who was there?
Our kick-off ceremonies included keynote speaker Dr. Blaise Aguirre, Medical Director of McLean 3East in Boston and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Also speaking at the ceremonies was Nicole Noren, ESPN Producer, whose Outside The Lines Sasha’s Story made waves in the US. Nicole was accompanied by Teresa Braeckel, a sexual assault survivor and advocate. Local musician Michelle Ronchin aka R. Shelley performed “Be There” a new song she wrote for this year’s walk and was joined by Matt Elder and Rob Hughes who performed during the walk.
Borderline Walk Pictures
Here are a few links to pictures of this year’s walk. Just click on the images below:
Borderline Walk Video
As seen by one of our Sashbear walk volunteers
Toronto – Sunday May 29th. 6:45 am. Lynn, Mike, and a bunch of Sashbear volunteers are meeting on the Lakeshore for the Walk. We have been working for months in preparation for the event. The day has finally come!
We get the brooms, cleaning products, paper towels, and latex gloves out, and we enthusiastically start the day. The tables in the registration gazebo are now clean and we cover them with an orange plastic cloth. Orange is our colour, one of Sasha’s favorite colors. It brought sunshine to her darkness.
The stations are ready – Pre-registrations, walk-ins, volunteers table, sandwich boards carriers, t-shirts, water bottles, team flags, door prizes, promo and donation tables, speakers’ corner, a photography “booth” with a bench and a big white bear… we are all set to go!
Your support makes a difference
With the money raised from this event, we are disseminating the importance of early prevention, life coping skills, and a more compassionate validating environment for everyone. We are bringing awareness and support to communities through our school talks, workshops, and conference networking sessions. Here are some of the efforts that your donations will help fund:
- Family Connections in Toronto and expansion throughout Canada
- Borderline What? – a message of hope School Talks
- Social Emotional Learning STEPS-A DBT skills in Schools Pilot Research Study
- Future events to raise awareness
- Capacity-building projects such as DBT training
Our Walk Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsors for making this event a success. The sponsors of this year’s Borderline Walk:
Platinum
Gold
Silver
Messages of awareness
The following messages of awareness were shown during the walk by our tireless volunteer “sandwich people” which carried them, one on their back and one on their front:
