In summer 2013, nine students from Chetham’s will travel to South Africa and Namibia for four weeks. They will work on a series of community projects in impoverished rural areas, renovating essential buildings like schools, planting vegetable gardens, and possibly even teaching English to local children - they see this as a way of giving their own time and energy to benefit others.
They will also undertake a challenging trek through the Fish River canyon. All this will be a major learning experience! Not only will they be exposed to new cultures, customs and environments, but they will also plan and organise every aspect of the expedition themselves, from booking transport and accommodation, to buying and cooking food, and managing the budget. They are also responsible for financing the trip entirely themselves, and so are organising a variety of fundraising events, through which they are developing leadership and other skills.
The students involved are Emma Bain, Lizzie Parkes, Asher Oliver, Ben Hulme, Abi Mitchell, Ella Wheeler, Lorenz Jones, Dominique Bespalov and Xin Chen, and each will need to raise just over £4000 to take part in the challenge!
So how can you help?
As a school, we have registered with www.easyfundraising.org.uk and if you ever shop online (Amazon, John Lewis, Tesco, or whatever), you can help our students raise funds for their trip by using this service. There is no extra cost for the products you buy and you do not need to create a new account with the stores. The only change to what you normally do is that, when you want to buy something, you go through the easyfundraising site, rather than going direct to the store's website. The store then donates a percentage of the cost of what you buy to the cause.
What do you need to do?
1. Register with easyfundraising by following these instructions:
Click on this link http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/chethamswc which goes directly to our cause page. From this page simply click on the Join me up box and register your details.
2. When you shop online, login to www.easyfundraising.org.uk and then click through to your required store, following the instructions on the screen.
It's as easy as that! The only thing to be aware of is that, although easyfundraising do not forward your details to anyone, they are likely to send you some marketing material, for example, special offers etc. If you don’t want these, you can simply filter and delete them.
The students have taken steps to put the ‘fun’ into fundraising with community initiatives such as a pancake-tossing competition on Shrove Tuesday when students paid a small fee to enter the competition in aid of the cause. Other events to raise money for their expedition are being planned - watch this space!
