Walk around the World

A group of 33 young people aged 14-25 answered a call to Walk around the World with Activ8rlives. Few had ever met, but all wanted to be more active.

With funding from a local sports charity, LIVING SPORT to subsidise the costs, each participant started self monitoring their activity with a Buddy step counter and uploading their activity data to their private account on Activ8rlives. Each also joined the Walk around the World group with its private chat room through which they post supportive comments, share successes and failures and receive technical support.

It is also where they can track the progress of the group as it walks around the globe using the integral Adventures game. This allows groups of people to explore the World using the stunning satellite images from Google Earth™ – travelling along the route they have planned, by being active every day.

Each group can plan a number of routes between any starting and finishing position on the globe. Routes can be straight lines or they can follow roads, rivers, cities, mountain ranges, golf courses, animal migration routes, famous trails, historic sites, art museums or locations of corporate subsidiaries, following the terrain of Google Earths’ beautiful 3D topography maps.

Group members can zoom down to their current location to explore the cities they are travelling through, see famous landmarks, check out golf courses, fly along valleys, soar over snow covered peaks or journey as a school class to visit partner schools located on different continents.

Each member contributes to the group’s journey steps by uploading their activity data from their Activ8rlives’ Buddy step counter, or they can enter it manually into their account so no purchase is ever required to be a member of Activ8rlives or to use Adventures. The combined distance travelled along the planned route are shown to all members of the group in real time.

The emphasis of this travel game was co-operation rather than competition, and on the promotion of long term engagement as opposed to short term competitive challenges or races. The pace of progress along a route is set by the group’s collective level of activity. There are no time limits or imposed start or stop dates. Groups may begin their adventure whenever they choose, take as long as they wish and take it one day at a time!

Adventures can be used by anyone of any level of fitness or sporting ability. It is ideally suited to those who do not consider themselves to be good at sports or who feel excluded from competitive sporting activities, but want to be active and healthy.