Founder celebrates Greater Manchester taking a huge step towards becoming the first Daily Mile City-Region

The Daily Mile, supported by INEOS, is celebrating Greater Manchester taking a huge step towards becoming the first Daily Mile city-region.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Elaine Wyllie, founder of The Daily Mile, joined forces to encourage schools across Greater Manchester to get moving. 

In March, 2018, Mr Burnham joined Ms Wyllie and made the commitment for Greater Manchester (GM) to become the world’s first Daily Mile City-Region.

Now they a step closer to achieving that ambition as organisers reached the milestone of 500 primary schools being signed up to The Daily Mile across Greater Manchester. 

As Greater Manchester approached this milestone, GreaterSport ran a competition for school children to design a running jersey to celebrate the achievement.

Hundreds of children from across the city region sent in their designs, and the winning design selected by Ms Wyllie will be presented to its creator Freya Costello from Willows Primary School.

The Daily Mile is a transformative initiative where children run, jog wheel or walk for 15 minutes every day, in which time, most people will average a mile or more.

The initiative has enjoyed phenomenal success since it was started by then Headteacher Ms Wyllie just eight years ago, and today three million children across 12,000 schools are now running a mile a day. 

Currently, Greater Manchester has some of the lowest levels of physical activity within the entire United Kingdom.

However, throughout the last two years, The Daily Mile has grown in popularity across the region as it has worked to tackle the low levels of physical activity, particularly amongst members of Greater Manchester’s youngest population.

Ms Wyllie said: “It is so exciting to see so many schools and children get involved in The Daily Mile and this jersey competition.

"Community and wellness are so important at the moment and getting moving everyday can really help our mental health.

"With Covid-19 shutting schools again, staying physically and mentally healthy is more important than ever."

With the majority of children now being home-schooled due to the reintroduction of a national lockdown, The Daily Mile have updated and re-launched their #DailyMileAtHome resources to support families to keep moving safely.

The challenges help families to get outside and moving together each day to help look after their physical and mental health during these difficult times.

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