Imagine a weekend where the brightest minds in volunteer leadership come together to exchange ideas and recharge their diabetes fuel tanks. The 2025 CWD Volunteer Team Leader Retreat Weekend in Orlando, Florida brought together 50 of the most dedicated and innovative volunteer team leaders, creating a dynamic environment of collaboration, inspiration, and growth. Over two days, they shared strategies for our youth programming track at our Friends for Life conferences, tackled common challenges across all programming, and built lasting connections—all with one shared goal: to strengthen the impact of their volunteer teams and amplify the difference they make at Friends for Life.
Our 50 Volunteer Team Leaders were joined by CWD staff and several members of the Board of Directors for the weekend retreat. Leaders spent the weekend building the curriculum and activities for our Friends for Life conferences this year. The youth curriculum is tightly aligned with ISPAD guidelines for the very best care in pediatric diabetes management. From social events to faculty-led conversations about mental health-related issues, the team has planned an amazing line-up of sessions that are sure to engage all attendees—green and orange bands, alike!
In addition to working on the youth programming curriculum, the CWD team met with several of our key partners at Disney to discuss everything from meals and snack breaks to the entertainment at the banquet. We reviewed the floor plans for the exciting exhibit hall and worked on rearranging some of our break-out meeting rooms to better fit the growing number of attendees at FFL each year. We also visited with our partners at The Gaylord Palms and reviewed the meeting and convention space for our upcoming conferences in 2028-2030.
Our volunteers are the heartbeat of our organization, often working behind the scenes with little fanfare yet making such a profound impact on our Friends for Life conference series. Their time, energy, and excitement are gifts that can’t be measured, but their effects are felt deeply across our entire CWD community. Just like caped crusaders, they dedicate their time, energy, and skills to causes bigger than themselves, making a lasting impact that is felt far and wide. We are so excited to work with this team of superheroes and know that this will be the best year of Friends for Life to date!
Orange and Green Forever,
Leigh
Written by Leigh Fickling, JD, MEd, MS
