Courageous advocacy

As a school, we aim to develop children who can recognise and understand issues of injustice both within the local community and the wider world. Educating for courageous advocacy is really about supporting the children to become agents of change and allowing them the opportunities to put their ideas into action.

Groups of children from the school have made a significant impact locally through our after school club ‘Community and well-being club’ run by the Learning Mentor and supported by a Church Leader. The group regularly go  litter picking in all weathers to clean up the streets  around the local area where most of the children live.

We encourage children to speak out and become news reporters through our Jill Dando News Team. These children /reporters  work with senior members of staff and secondary colleagues to produce articles for the Trust newspaper.

Our Year 4 children take part in the Archbishop Of York Young Leaders Award which is a fantastic project to inspire children to be the change that they want to see in the world around them. It is a well structured, educational resource which supports children to explore and reflect on what might make their local community better. In recent years , the children were inspired to spend time with the elderly in a local care home and with members of the local church. The children chose to do this because they felt that the elderly people can be lonely and thought they could bring them some joy. The children performed songs and shared some of their recent learning which got the conversations going for a long time. Children have also chosen to support  a local charity  Weston Hospice Care to raise money to continue their work.  Another project involved a new to you sale so that children and their families in the local area could have access to toys and clothes. Money raised through the sale was given to Weston Foodbank. We are looking forward to seeing what cause the children would like to support this year.

As a school,  we support a charity called Kenya Hope.  In the past we have provided the children in schools in Kenya with books, pencils, rubbers, sharpeners, pens and paper.  After hearing a talk, earlier this year, about a school in Kenya, where not everyone had a meal, the children wanted to support the charity by organising a huge sponsored walk to raise money so  the school in Malanga could plant crops to feed all of the children.  St. Anne’s raised £2,500, enough to also improve their school kitchen! The sponsored walk will become an annual event at St. Anne’s so that all pupils at Malanga Primary School will be able to be fed.