Kevin Vasquez wanted to find a way to get people off of their phones and back into real-life conversations.<\/p>\n
Vasquez, 24, is currently studying business and entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Arlington.<\/p>\n
“I am working toward one day owning a cafe and restaurant where I can host social events for the community to meet new people,” Vasquez said.<\/p>\n
So where would a busy 20-something come up with an idea to bring total strangers together on Dallas’ Katy Trail?<\/p>\n
“It started when my cousin Natalie invited me to walk and talk on the Katy Trail before work. That lasted about a month or two before I switched jobs and could not keep attending. Then in January of this year, a friend from church wanted to walk and talk on the Katy Trail on Thursday nights. We connected deeply, and I realized our young adults group at church needed something like this too. I invited everyone in Sunday class to a Friday night walk and talk, and only one person showed up. So I posted about it online, including a TikTok video that got around 30,000 views, and about 25 people came out,” Vasquez said.<\/p>\n
Three months later, more than 250 people are participating. <\/p>\n
“We have seen dozens of those moments, and probably many more we never even hear about [where people have connected],” Vasquez said.<\/p>\n
They host a Walk & Talk every Friday, weather permitting.<\/p>\n
“Our next event is this Friday, July 3 at 7 PM. Everyone gets randomly partnered up to walk with someone new, in hopes that a real friendship forms from it,” Vasquez said.<\/p>\n
July 3 meetup will start at the Thomsen Overlook on the Katy Trail. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Vasquez wanted to find a way to get people off of their phones and back into real-life…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":909965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7948,1596,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,23761],"class_list":["post-909964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-arlington","tag-dallas","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-ut-arlington"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116856513236873175","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}