Last October we came to Lincoln Financial Field as Team Mac & Cheese, cheered and played all morning, and left with fuller hearts. We’re doing it again. Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026 is the 25th annual CHOP Buddy Walk® & Family Fun Day, and the YMCA Adventure Guides will be there in team shirts.
We’d like you with us.
Why I Walk
The CHOP Buddy Walk® is the sole fundraiser for CHOP’s Trisomy 21 Program, which cares for more than 1,200 children and 300 adults each year. The program would not exist as it does today without it.
About one in every 800 children is born with Down syndrome. Those individuals face higher risks for heart conditions and for orthopedic, neurological, gastrointestinal, endocrine, feeding, and developmental challenges. Buddy Walk dollars fund the research, therapies, equipment, and services that change those odds. One hundred percent of proceeds go to the T21 Program.
This one is personal. My son Macario has Down syndrome, and the T21 team has been part of our family’s life from the beginning. Walking with him, surrounded by other families doing the same, is how we raise the money and also how we show him in the plainest terms available that he is loved and celebrated by a community much larger than our house.
The team is named for him. It started as a family effort and has grown into something bigger: family, friends, coworkers, and Adventure Guides families all walking under one banner. Over the past three years Team Mac & Cheese has contributed more than $40,000 to the T21 Program, including over $10,000 last year alone.
Why This Matters to Adventure Guides
Service, empathy, father-child connection, and community leadership are core to who we are. The Buddy Walk is where those words become a Saturday morning our kids can actually remember.
What they take away from it:
- Inclusion. Walking alongside individuals with Down syndrome shows our kids that difference is part of ordinary life and worth celebrating.
- Kindness. Cheering, high-fives, helping a friend at a carnival game. Small things that add up to something visible.
- Giving back. The stage program spells out where the money goes, which connects the fundraising our kids helped with to a real result.
- Teamwork. Registering as a team, wearing the shirts, moving across the grounds together.
Showing up in person teaches something a donation link can’t. The Buddy Walk is a classroom with balloons.
How to Join Us
Walk with us. Full schedule, cost, and parking details are on the event page, or register directly for Team Mac & Cheese here: Join the team. Bring your kids, bring your partner, bring a friend.
Donate. If Oct. 24 doesn’t work, you can still give: Donate to Team Mac & Cheese. Many employers match charitable gifts, which doubles what your contribution does.
Share it. Our team page is chop.donordrive.com/teams/Mac-and-Cheese. Send it to anyone who’d want in.
To the families who walked with us last year, to the volunteers and CHOP staff, and to everyone who gave: thank you. See you at the Linc on the 24th.
— YMCA Adventure Guides, Team Mac & Cheese