A COMPREHENSIVE school drive to raise awareness of autism has taken social media by storm after being backed by prominent figures from the arts world, politics and media.

Ex Boyzone singer Keith Duffy, ice skaters Torvill and Dean, Good Morning Britain presenter John Stapleton, and Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones have all given their backing to the initiative at Fairwater High in Cwmbran.

The school set up a Facebook page calling on people to raise awareness of the disorder by taking photos of themselves while holding the slogan “Proud to Share I’m Aware”.

But what started as a school-based exercise with photos of pupils holding the slogan snowballed beyond expectations.

Within a couple of days more than 1,000 people had liked their Facebook page, others had uploaded photos of themselves holding with the slogan and more had used Twitter to publicise their drive.

John Stapleton re -sent a tweet from the school about the initiative, as did Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, Carwyn Jones, the comedian Mike Doyle and a host of other people and organisations like Blaenavon Town Band.

Fairwater High autism unit manager Esther Nicolaou said: “We could not believe that in 48 hours we had over 1,000 likes, loads of photos uploaded and now interest on Twitter and retweets from celebrities.

“We are quite shell shocked but plan to continue to try and keep sharing until at least World Autism Awareness Week in April.”

The secondary school in Ty-Gwyn Way has had a specialist unit which caters for about pupils with autism for the last 10 years.

Fairwater High decided to launch the Facebook page to mark the landmark anniversary of the unit known as a “support base”.

For more information on the initiative go to the Proud to Share I'm Aware page on Facebook.