PODCAST: A home-grown Guernsey success story

Alun Williams is the Be Active Education Lead at Guernsey’s Health Improvement Commission, a charity dedicated to empowering, enabling and encouraging healthy living in Guernsey and Alderney. 

Be Active is part of the commission’s work to promote an active lifestyle by creating positive community initiatives and advocating for the development of environments which encourage and enable everyday physical activity including walking and cycling through active travel. Its work focuses on children, young people and adults. 

Originally from London, he first came to Guernsey four decades ago to work with the careers service before becoming the Education Department’s lifelong learning manager.

As Chairman of the Guernsey Adolescent Smoke-free Project, known as GASP, he spearheaded an award-winning anti-smoking campaign which was instrumental in bringing about an island-wide ban on smoking in enclosed public and workplaces. He’s held many voluntary roles alongside his career and has been heavily involved with the Guernsey Athletics Club for many years, including a stint as president and coach. He’s also competed in more than 500 local athletic races over the years. 

Through his role at the Health Improvement Commission, Alun helped roll out ‘The Daily Mile’ to schools across the island. This global initiative involves schools committing to get young people out running and walking for a mile (15 minutes) every day. 

In this Project Bijou podcast, Alun talks to Data Protection Commissioner Brent Homan about working with the ODPA on a fitness tracker aimed at getting Bailiwick children moving and his long, distinguished career serving the Bailiwick.

Storytelling is at the heart of Project Bijou, the ODPA’s social initiative aiming to change behaviour and shift culture to reduce data harms.