{"id":10427,"date":"2025-10-19T00:38:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/10427\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T00:38:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:38:16","slug":"friends-down-syndrome-special-needs-raises-100000-ahead-of-tampa-buddy-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/10427\/","title":{"rendered":"FRIENDS Down Syndrome Special Needs raises $100,000 ahead of Tampa Buddy Walk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Friends Down Syndrome Special Needs announced it raised more than $100,000 before the 9th annual Buddy Walk at Carrollwood Village Park, a pre-event total organizers said surpassed the group\u2019s $80,000 goal.<\/p>\n<p>More than 800 participants were expected for the Buddy Walk, which was emceed by Wendy Ryan and brought together families, volunteers, and community partners to celebrate inclusion and raise money for local services.<\/p>\n<p>Organizers said the early fundraising will support FRIENDS\u2019 free year\u2011round programs, scholarships, advocacy work, and social events for people with Down syndrome and other special needs across West Florida.<\/p>\n<p>For more information or to donate, click <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/charity.pledgeit.org\/FRIENDSWESTFL\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Trending_Video_TampaBay28.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Concrete company responds after multiple drivers say repaving project damaged their cars<\/p>\n<p>Weeks after drivers started reaching out to Tampa Bay 28 about damage to their vehicles, we\u2019re finally hearing from the contractor behind the Tyrone Boulevard repaving project.<\/p>\n<p>Concrete company responds after multiple drivers say repaving project damaged their cars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Friends Down Syndrome Special Needs announced it raised more than $100,000 before the 9th annual&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[205,10080,10081,10082,276,10083,135,3670,137,136,10084,208],"class_list":["post-10427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-abc-action-news","tag-buddy-walk","tag-down-syndrome","tag-friends-down-syndrome","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-special-needs","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-local-news","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-wendy-ryan","tag-wfts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}