MEDIA RELEASE – Wednesday 16th August 2017.
On Friday 4th and Saturday 5th 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.
This year we had 725 locations registered across 23 countries and our final count numbers are as follows (all numbers are provisional):
17,790 children breastfeeding during the one-minute count
18,036 breastfeeding women attended
50,383 people attended registered Global Big Latch On locations to support breastfeeding.
On Working Wednesday, we celebrated and supported those who breastfeed and work both in photos and by a live Facebook chat. We had 22 women take part in this event.
Selfies Sunday, a total of 412 breastfeeding or expressing selfies were post on social media under #mybiglatchon. This event was supported by a well attended live Facebook chat.
Express Yourself, our event for exclusively expressing women and those who donate milk had 82 women taking part and a well attended live Facebook chat.
We will be continuing our work of building support and communities through our Big, Small Catch Up’s and ongoing Facebook chats that focus on #BreastfeedingJourneys, #NoOneWay #NoOneSize.
“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]