Our fundraising story at St. Francis’ Church of England Junior School.
Here at St. Francis’ Junior School, in Newton Aycliffe, we believe that everyone should be given the opportunity to shine their light, learn through wonderful experiences, be given all the tools to access education and to use these skills to be the best they can be! However, what do you do when your only form of transport to and from school is damaged in an unfortunate accident and with no money to fix or get a new one and with school being over 23 miles away?
Reverend Anne, who is the church leader of our parish, visited a school in Tanzania many years ago and has since been working closely with a school there, our friends, St. John’s Place, Secondary, Primary and Nursery School in Kilimatinde, Tanzania. They are missing out on an education, a school life and a chance to make and develop friendships. We are very grateful that no one was hurt but strongly feel that every child deserves an education and a childhood. The distance to and from school for these children is 23 miles, that would take over six hours to walk.
As a school, we have been working alongside the Great Aycliffe Parish to raise funds to buy the school a new bus. With £1000 as our target, we set to work to raise awareness and raise money to help our friends in Tanzania.
In May, we held a school disco with part of the money raised through tickets going towards our target. The children and staff danced the night away. They enjoyed party games, dancing and a special visit from Spiderman himself! A big thanks to party company, ‘Twice As Nice’ who transformed our hall into a tropical Lula and supplied the games and tunes! Such a fun evening for such a worthy cause!
Our next fundraising idea included the year 4’s collective worship. They learnt lines, songs and stories to inform parents all about St. John’s Place and the efforts we were making to help get the children back to school. They were so brave and did a fantastic job at raising awareness to our cause.
We were getting closer and closer to our target as the time went on but needed one more push. We held a sponsored walk and colour run! We invited parents, carers and all family members to join us in a walk around our local community followed by a colour run. It was great to see so many people joining us. We had great fun and we were all extremely colourful!
So far, we have raised £845!
We are overwhelmed with the support and generosity of those who have donated, raised awareness or told our story as, without them, we wouldn’t have achieved so much in such a short amount of time.
We are within touching distance of our £1000 target and would love your support to get to our final goal. Please, donate if you can at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lisa-faheybusfortanzania
Thank you!