Our World Breastfeeding Week Celebrations – Media Release 10th August 2016

MEDIA RELEASE – Wednesday 10th August 2016.

The Global Big Latch On, a Celebration for World Breastfeeding Week Final Counts

On Friday 5^th and Saturday 6th August at 10:30am each day, women and their children came together round the world and breastfed simultaneously as part of the Global Big Latch On. The Global Big Latch On takes place at a registered locations around the world, where women gather together to breastfeed and offer peer support to each other. Their friends, family and community join this celebration to promote and support breastfeeding. Volunteers from within the community host each location, hosting a Global Big Latch On creates a lasting support network for the community.

We are excited to announce that this year we broke the Global Big Latch On record of 14,889 children latching that was set in 2015. We had 758 locations registered across 28 countries.

Our final count numbers are as follows (all numbers are provisional):

17,992 children breastfeeding during the one-minute count

17,852 breastfeeding women attended

48,628 people attended registered Global Big Latch On locations to support breastfeeding.

This year saw the introduction on Working Wednesday, where we asked for photos to be posted on Instagram of expressing and breastfeeding at work or expressing spaces. We had 18 women take part in this event and it was supported by a well attended live Facebook chat that evening.

On Sunday 7^th August, we continued our celebrations with two events:

Express Yourself, our event for exclusively expressing women and those who donate milk. Saw a huge rise in numbers to a total of 143 women taking part (compared to 24 in 2015), between them they are had expressed 5375.5oz of human milk in 24hours. We will be releasing their stories over the coming weeks on our blog and social media.

Selfies Sunday, a total of 336 breastfeeding or expressing selfies were post on social media under #mybiglatchon.

“These event builds communities, physical and virtual, one latch at a time. They increase support for all families and help to change global culture around breastfeeding. It is really important that we continue to make breastfeeding in public a normal and supported part of having a child.”

“Congratulations to everyone.”

For more information about the Big Latch On please see www.biglatchon.org

Contact: Joanne Edwards

Global Coordinator, [email protected]