Organizing a 400-Person Walkathon (and Learning I Love Big Projects)

One of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in high school had nothing to do with coding, robotics, or AI — it was organizing a 400-person school walkathon to support under-resourced children with diabetes.

For charity week last year, I decided to go big. I didn’t want a small fundraiser that only a few people participated in — I wanted something almost the entire school could be part of. So I treated it like a two-month operations project.

Turning an Idea into a Plan

The first step was convincing the school administration to give me the entire PE period for the whole high school. They were supportive… but understandably skeptical that something on this scale could actually work.

Next, I:

• Recruited captains from every grade to handle sponsor outreach

• Designed a class-vs-class competition, where each class competed to walk the most combined laps

• Built systems for lap tracking, donation collection, and coordination

By the end, I had a 200-row spreadsheet tracking tasks, people, logistics, and contingencies.

The Day Of

On the day of the walkathon, I spent most of the time running back and forth across the field, making sure lap-tracking was working, solving small problems as they popped up, and keeping everything moving.

And it worked.

We:

• Walked ~2,000 total laps

• Raised $9,000

• Got nearly the entire school moving together toward one goal

What I Took Away

What started as a slightly over-ambitious idea turned into one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had. Seeing hundreds of people moving in the same direction — because of a plan I helped design — made me realize something important:

I actually love running large, complex projects.

Whether it’s engineering, research, or community service, I enjoy breaking big ideas into systems, coordinating people, and making something real happen.