When John Richard Baker, Assistant National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales, died in July 1998 from leukemia, his wife Annie and her best friend Chris got the ladies of the local Women’s Institute together with the idea of producing a calendar to raise money for cancer charity. Each month would feature a different woman in the women's group, doing ordinary things like making jam, flower arranging, or knitting. The traditional idea had a radical twist -- the women would appear nude. The calendar gained international attention which eventually led to the filming of the Calendar Girls movie.

When Baker was diagnosed with cancer, he began growing sunflowers and gave them to friends and family --hoping to live long enough to see them fully-bloomed. Unfortunately, he lost his life to cancer before that happened. The sunflower has become the cancer charity fundraising activities symbol for his family and friends.

Wearing bras decorated in sunflowers, the Calendar Girls, together with friends and family, are now training for London's Playtex Moonwalk, a cancer charity fundraising event in which thousands of women walk 26.2 miles through the night wearing elaborately decorated bras.  While the past efforts of the women's group have raised more than £1m total for leukemia research, this walk will be for breast cancer charity. In addition, the Calendar Girls recently launched a 2007 calendar. Profits from the calendar will continue to go to leukemia research.

Ten years ago, Nina Barough, with no previous experience in fundraising, power walking or marathons, woke up one morning with what seemed to her a brilliant idea – to power walk the New York marathon in a decorated bra to raise money for breast cancer. Barough was simply looking for a way to make breast cancer fundraising fun. The first year, thirteen women joined her in the New York marathon.

At the time of her brilliant idea, Barough did not suspect she had breast cancer. One year after the first walk, Barough was diagnosed with breast cancer. While she was undergoing surgery and cancer treatments, those around her decided to power walk the London Marathon as a way to show their support for her. The London Marathon walk was a huge success, raising over £25,000. After this Walk the Walk, the decorated and designed bras were auctioned.

In the spring of 1998 a Walk the Walk team entered the London Marathon, but places were limited, and only 25 people were able to register. Another 25 were denied entrance into the marathon. Nina decided to create a marathon for those left out. She came up with a marathon that started at midnight and ended at seven in the morning the day of the official London Marathon. The Moonwalk has become a wildly popular and major annual event.

Since its humble beginnings, Walk the Walk has become a worldwide annual event and has raised excess of £2.5million for breast cancer research and cancer care programs.