Over a thousand young people celebrate Youth Work Week with the Big Welsh Walk

In celebration of this year’s Youth Work Week (3-10 November), last weekend saw more than 1,000 young people from across Wales walk the perimeter of the country along the Wales’ coastal path.

The Big Welsh Walk 2012, arranged by Monmouthshire County Council Youth Service, covered an impressive 1,047 miles split it into 5km sections. Youth workers from the 22 Welsh local authorities and the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services joined young people in walking sections of the route, planting daffodil bulbs along the way.

Kicking off Youth Work Week, the national event highlighted the huge range of council-backed and voluntary youth activities and support services that benefit nearly 300,000 young people across Wales every year.

Monmouthshire County Council’s Leader, Peter Fox took part in the walk and said:

“The Big Welsh Walk was an opportunity for us to praise all of the good work that happens in youth services all around Wales. It’s a fantastic service, often not spoken about but it does so much for our young people. There’s a huge amount that happens that lots of us don’t realise and Youth Work Week gives us the opportunity to acknowledge that.”

Ross Edwards, a young person from Caldicot also enjoyed taking part:

“We had a brilliant time on Saturday afternoon. It was amazing to think that we were walking the same path as so many other young people across the country. We took part in a national event just on our doorstep. It was a for a good reason too. In fact, I’m going to college to do my youth work training and hope to carry on the amazing work youth workers do everyday.”

The Big Welsh Walk 2012 was generously sponsored nationally by Learning and Skills Improvement Service and locally by adventa.

A video of Councillor Peter Fox talking about the event is available on the MonYouth YouTube account.

A selection of photographs can be viewed on the MonYouth Flickr photostream.