Twelve weeks ago, JP Morgan Chase issued a challenge to its employees: team up with coworkers and try to walk up to  10,000 steps per day, and the company will donate up to $5 million to charities that fight hunger all over the world.

The challenge, which comes to an end this week, caught the attention of Chase Vashon’s lead teller Virginia Sager. Always looking for more ways to include fitness into her days, Sager emailed the branch’s other employees and the Vashonistas, as they named their team, were born.

“Every single one of us joined,” said Valerie Howe, a Chase Vashon financial advisor. “This has really changed my life.”

Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot, a spokeswoman for Chase, explained that the program, Step Up for World Hunger, was designed not only to fight hunger on a global scale, but to improve the health and wellbeing of employees by getting them moving.

“These are two important focal points for the company, so it’s a win-win situation for everyone,” she said.

For its part, Chase provided team members with free pedometers if they needed them and a special program website, where team members could challenge and encourage each other, as well as input their daily steps. Overall, 122,000 employees took part, averaging 13,252 steps per day, according to Linda Yurisich, a teller with Chase for over 12 years and Vashonista team member.

“So far, JP Morgan has donated over $1.5 million to organizations including  Mana, Feeding America, Feeding Children Everywhere and Care,” Yurisich said. “And overall, enough steps have been taken to travel from the earth to the moon 83 times. It’s amazing.”

The members of the Vashonista team did not always walk or do equivalent exercise together, but they said that they were always connected by email and the website to keep each other going. Jill Heryford, a personal/relationship banker, explained that she had to spend most of the challenge period in work-related training off-island, but that being a part of the team encouraged her to ride her bike to commute instead of driving.

“It also kept me connected to my friends when I wasn’t able to see them every day,” she said.

All of the Vashonistas say that they plan to continue their conscious efforts to move more even though the company challenge is ending.

“Before we started this, a normal day for me would include about 2,500 steps,” Sager said. “The change in lifestyle is a big one, and it’s really made a difference.”

The team’s statistics agree. Out of a total of 13,897 teams participating, the Vashonistas ranked 4,821st. Through last week, the team had logged 330,000 steps, and three of the team’s members reported losing from 3 to 8 percent of their body weight during the challenge period.

“It’s a different way of living and feeling,” Howe said. “We’ve learned a lot about ourselves by making this attempt, and awareness is probably the biggest change for all of us.”