Courageous Advocacy

A harvest display was created at All Saints Church through the generous community donations for our annual Harvest Festival. Between All Saints Church at Lydiard Millicent, we gave 170kg of food plus cash donations to the Swindon Food Collective.

During term 1, as part of their topic ‘How can children help shape the future of our planet?’, Class 4 had a virtual visit from WWF. During their virtual meeting, they were introduced to things which are harming our planet and causing issues like climate change. Following on from the virtual meeting, Class 4 all decided they wanted to try and help the planet and came up with a list of different things they wanted to learn about to help them further their understanding. These included: fossil fuels, recycling and endangered animals. Class 4 learnt more about WWF and how you can adopt an endangered animal to help support the conservation of these animals and the work different charities do. As part of this, Class 4 set their minds on raising money to adopt their very own endangered animal. Together, they researched different charities who offer the adoption of endangered animals and found out that Cotswold Wildlife Park offer the opportunity to not only adopt an animal but also go and visit their adopted animal in person. With their sights set on this goal, Class 4 organised and held a cake sale after school one afternoon and were fortunate enough to raise enough money to adopt a red panda. The money they were able to raise went towards supporting Cotswold Wildlife Park's breeding and conservation programmes.

During October 2022, we took part in the official Mini London Marathon for schools.  The children had to run 2.6 miles over the course of a week, or over less time for those who wanted an additional challenge.  Some children even chose to run the whole distance in one go!  The children’s friends and families all supported them and helped to raise money for the Prospect Hospice.  The Hospice provides much needed end of life care, whenever and wherever it is needed.  As a school we raised an amazing £634, a truly staggering amount of money.  Through running the Mini London Marathon, the children had fun while being active and raising much needed funds for a very worthwhile cause.

The EYFS class were involved with Operation Christmas Child, run by the UK charity Samaritan’s Purse.  It is a campaign which involves wrapping, packing and sending shoeboxes full of gifts to children in need around the world. Through this campaign, we wanted to teach children about generosity for others, and compassion, to make them aware of the fact that there are children elsewhere in the world who have nothing, and give them the opportunity to do something practical, yet so simple, that can make such a difference. The EYFS children, other members of the school and Lydiard Millicent village community, very generously donated items for the box.  The children then packed the shoe boxes with help from members of All Saints’ Church, Lydiard Millicent. We managed to pack 22 boxes.