Northbourne Park pupils take part in WaterAid fundraising

On Friday November 4, children at Northbourne Park School took part in fundraising activities in support of WaterAid as part of the school’s ‘Water Week’ awareness project.

Nursery and Pre-Prep school took part in a pipeline challenge. The children were split into four groups and used small beakers to create a pipeline moving the water from one end to the other. At the beginning of the line was a full bucket of water, at the end of the line, an empty one. This demonstrated the difficulties that children in under developed countries face for something that we all take for granted when we turn the tap on … water!

A £2 donation purchases a metre of pipeline that makes so much difference.

While the Nursery and Pre-Prep children were engineering their WaterAid pipeline, children at the Prep School were embracing the challenge of a 1 or 2 mile run around the school’s cross country course. Pupils were encouraged to collect sponsorships to take part, with the money going towards Wateraid. Mrs Hayes, Head of RS and Charities, will also be raising funds by running the London Marathon next year. Mrs Hayes has to raise a total of £2000 to secure her charity marathon place, and is very appreciative of all the effort so many pupils have made to contribute.

“Without the enthusiastic support of so many pupils and their families, my fundraising would be a lot trickier. It has been great to have the opportunity to tell the pupils about the work of WaterAid this week so that they understand the good work their money is going to do,” Mrs Hayes said.

As well as finding out about the need for clean water and good toilets across much of Asia and Africa, pupils also considered water issues closer to home, including how to save water in their own homes and prevent water pollution.

This has also been an opportunity to develop the link between Northbourne Park School and partner school, St Paul’s KAASO in Uganda who also held a ‘Water Week’. Children at St Paul’s KAASO took part in similar activities, and pupils in both schools wrote poems about water and took part in a survey about water use and availability in their homes. The results will be shared between the two schools.

Pupils were very engaged with the topic and shocked by the difficulties many children around the world face in accessing safe drinking water. Year 6 pupil Lara commented “I cannot believe they walk all that way, and it is just for a muddy puddle.”

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