Press Release: PM Awards ‘Outstanding’ Founder of The Daily Mile

The Prime Minister Theresa May has today awarded Elaine Wyllie, the Founder of The Daily Mile, the Points of Light award, which recognises innovative and inspirational volunteering. Each day the Prime Minister selects a volunteer who’s making a change in their community with the award to celebrate their achievements. Elaine is the latest recipient of the award for promoting physical and mental health and well-being with The Daily Mile.

The Daily Mile is a fun, free and simple initiative where children run or jog, at their own pace, for fifteen minutes every day. Elaine started the fitness initiative 6 years ago while the headteacher of St Ninians Primary School in Stirling. From this single school the campaign has spread across the UK and internationally and is now a fixture of the school day in over 5,000 schools in 44 countries.

In 2015 Elaine won the Pride of Britain Teacher of the Year Award for her contribution towards the success of the programme in Scotland. Since then Elaine has been a driving force of the programme’s increasing popularity. Within this time Elaine has addressed schools and head teachers across the country, appeared in 2 national TV ad campaigns and attended Daily Mile activity at schools across the globe to illustrate the transformational health and wellbeing benefits of The Daily Mile and its ability to provide a serious solution to childhood obesity.

In a personal letter to Elaine, Prime Minister Theresa May said:

“Your innovative initiative is getting school children across the world moving more. The Daily Mile is having a tremendous impact in helping young people make the small changes needed to start healthy habits that will last for a lifetime.”

Stephen Kerr, MP for Stirling, said:

“This award is thoroughly well deserved. The idea of the ‘Daily Mile’ conceived by Elaine at her school in Stirling has been taken up by a huge number of schools around the world. Elaine should be extremely proud of the impact this initiative has had, and will continue to have, on so many young lives.”

 Elaine said:

“To receive this award from the Prime Minister is a wonderful honour. I would like to thank everyone at INEOS, our team at the ‘The Daily Mile Foundation’ and all of our supporters for their hard-work in making this initiative a success over the last few years. Most importantly, this would not be possible without the dedication and passion of school and nursery staff across the country who implement ‘The Daily Mile’ and improve the lives of the children in their care every day.”

ENDS.