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2012 Twin Cities VisionWalk
What an incredible day we had! Over 900 participants with great enthusiasm and energy came out to support the Foundation Fighting Blindness 6th Annual Twin Cities VisionWalk! Because of all your hard work, we have raised $158,313 for blindness research. Thank you to everyone who participated, sponsored or volunteered. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Donations can still be received and credited to the walk, so continue to follow up with individuals who have not yet donated.
Celebrating Excellence
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Chapter Leader and 2012 VisionWalk Chair Mark Valenziano and Events Director Michele DiVincenzo accepted the Outstanding VisionWalk Award on behalf of the Twin Cities VisionWalk. |
The Twin Cities VisionWalk was presented with the Foundation’s Member Excellence Outstanding VisionWalk Award for a large market at the VISIONS 2012 national conference in Minneapolis in June. The honor, which recognizes sustained high achievement of a VisionWalk, acknowledges the event’s consistent success as one of the largest fall walks. Congratulations to all of the walk chairs, team captains and participants!
Chapter Highlights
The Northern Lights (Minneapolis/St. Paul) Chapter is one of FFB’s longest standing hubs of community outreach, support, activism and fund raising. For more than 10 years, Julie Anderson has led a group of fellow volunteers on a very specific mission: to have a say in how fast treatments come to the table. Julie and the rest of the Northern Lights board and chapter members welcome new board members, chapter members and volunteers in this effort.
“There is a sense of exhilaration in knowing you are making a difference,” Julie says. “For me personally, the worst thing wouldn’t be going blind, rather, it would be looking back 10 years from now and know that I did nothing but worry.”
FFB Chapters, like the Northern Lights Chapter, activate FFB’s mission in communities across the US. The urgent mission of the Foundation Fighting Blindness is to drive the research that will provide preventions, treatments and cures for the people affected by retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, Usher syndrome and the entire spectrum of retinal degenerative diseases.
Four to five times each year, the Northern Lights Chapter gathers individuals concerned with retinal degenerative diseases and provides access to retinal specialists and helpful information from panels of experts in genetics, assistive technologies, and nutrition. Each meeting opens with breaking news in retinal research.
The news in retinal research has been extraordinary in 2008. Never before have there been so many potential therapies for blinding retinal degenerative diseases in human clinical trials. FFB’s unyielding pursuit of treatments and cures has launched retinal research into an era of unprecedented promise. And the Northern Lights Chapter plays a pivotal role in accelerating the pace of scientific discovery through its wildly successful annual Twin Cities VisionWalk. In just its first two years, the Twin Cities VisionWalk has raised almost $300,000 to fuel sight-saving research, innovation and results.
Julie credits VisionWalk for encouraging participation and increasing activity in the Northern Lights Chapter. “The Foundation’s VisionWalk enabled us to get in there and be part of the solution. It gives you a feeling of power over your disease.”
Interested in joining the Northern Lights Chapter? Please call Julie Anderson at 763-416-3900 or Michele DiVincenzo at the Foundation's Midwest Regional Office, at 847-680-0100. |
