Byte Night Wales helps raise a magic £1million to prevent youth homelessness
- Byte Night 2016 raises over £1m for the fourth year running
- 1300 people from top businesses joined UK’s largest sponsored sleep out
Action for Children’s annual Byte Night event has raised more than £1 million to help vulnerable children and young people living in Wales and across the UK.
70 technology and business experts in Wales bedded down for the night in the Principality Stadium, Cardiff as part of the first Welsh Byte Night on 7 October, joining almost 1,300 people across the UK for the challenge of sleeping rough to raise vital funds for the charity.
David Sadler, Byte Night Wales co-chair and head of IT at Acorn, said:
“We are proud to have played our part in raising more than £1 million to support Action for Children’s vital work for the fourth year running as all children and young people should have a safe place to call home. We are already thinking about how we can help even more children and young people by making Byte Night 2017 bigger and better than ever before.”
Byte Night has raised more than £9 million since it launched in 1998. This year, simultaneous sleep outs took place in Belfast, Bristol, Birmingham, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Newcastle, and Thames Valley. The money raised will support services such as the Rhondda Cynon Taf youth support team that helps young people with homelessness issues and develop life skills to help that difficult transition from child to adult.
Sir Tony Hawkhead, Chief Executive of Action for Children, slept out in Birmingham. He said:
“It’s a fantastic achievement to hit the £1 million mark again and a huge thanks has to go to everyone who slept out across the UK as part of Byte Night 2016. This collective effort will help make a big difference to the young people we help who don’t live in a safe and loving home, or have the luxury of returning to their own beds as we did after a night of sleeping rough.
“We cannot rest on this achievement, so we are already working on how to make Byte Night 2017 an even greater success. With registration already open, I would urge offices across Britain to make an early New Year’s Resolution and sign up now to join us for next year’s sleep out.”
If you would like to donate to Byte Night and support Action for Children’s youth homelessness services, please text ACTION and the amount to 70080 to the leading UK charity.
To find out more about Byte Night 2016 please visit bytenight.org.uk. For further information, photos and interview(s), please call Alastair Love on 07872 675688 or email Alastair.Love@actionforchildren.org.uk.
