Fundraising DHL
At Balsall Common, we recently held our annual Bikeability and Road Safety Week. We had the usual bike people booked to come into school, and the usual programme of an assembly and a bit of a theme for lessons. But, I thought, what if I could
do something practical that would highlight the dangers of crossing roads and of blind spots on lorries and buses? And what better way to do this than to put a 44-ton lorry on our KS2 playground! I did some research and soon came across a DHL programme called TACS (Truck and Child Safety). I emailed
parents to see if any of them worked at DHL – and guess what? One did! We arranged a meeting to discuss my idea. It turned out the TACS programme was more or less exactly what I wanted – and it didn’t cost a penny. The reality was that DHL felt
I was doing them the favour. The plan satisfied their CSR programme, which they were struggling to fulfil as schools either didn’t know about the programme, or put up barriers. It turned out that our event was the company’s biggest ever and caused quite a stir in both the school and the local community.
COOKATHON
This project started when I decided to enter The Big Cookathon event (at that time run by the Children’s Food Trust) with my school cooking club. Then, I thought, what if I involve a whole class, or maybe a whole year group, or why not the whole school? After five weeks of planning (during
which I was repeatedly told that it wouldn’t work!), I held my first cookathon. We had a total of 712 children all cooking a quick and easy vegetable biryani over the course of the day, at a rate of 30 pupils every 15 minutes. We won £2,000 for having the largest number of children cooking in a single day. The cookathon is now an annual
BAM CONSTRUCTION
I first contacted BAM when I was asked to get someone into school to talk about rivers. We already had Severn Trent but we wanted a different angle. I did some research and found a newspaper article in which BAM talked about building the Blythe Valley Business Park and how the company had diverted a river and created a wildlife reserve. I thought, what if... I just call
them? After being transferred a couple of times I was put through to Jess Duffell, BAM’s
sustainability adviser. I told her how I had found out about the company, and what I wanted. Jess arranged for BAM staff
to come in and spend the afternoon with our Year 4 children last year. They did a presentation, ran a practical activity on riverbed sediment (pictured), and held a quiz with prizes. This year, BAM returned with even better ideas and students of their own to help out and tell the children about the apprenticeship path.
event and goes from strength to strength. This year, it was practically bursting at the seams with local celebrities, dignitaries, parents and school supporters. These included our local mayor,
Rugby World Cup and Wasps Player Paul Sackey, Olympic medal-winner Phil Brown, nutritional adviser to the England Athletics Squad Zena Weeks, members of the Coventry Blaze ice-hockey team, Michelin- starred chef Matt Cheal, and students from Solihull college. Needless to say, we got some great
publicity, which helped raise the profile of the school. An incidental bonus was that the event created fantastic cross-networking opportunities for those involved. A cookathon is easy to set up and
great fun to run, and you can use low-cost, healthy ingredients (mine were provided by the Forest of Arden Marriott Hotel & Country Club).
SOLIHULL COLLEGE
Balsall Common’s relationship with the college began when we became members of the Solihull Chamber of Commerce. However, it was cemented following the disappointing news that The Skills Show at the NEC in Birmingham (the UK’s biggest skills and career event) had decided to exclude primary schools. This got me thinking, what if… I called Solihull College,
explained the problem and asked if the college could host 90 Year 6 pupils as part of our topic on careers. The staff were
keen to support us because they recognised the value of inspiring children at a young age. I visited the college to pick out activities and discuss logistics, and a suitable date was set. Together, we had, in effect,
established our own Skills Day. This has since become an annual event, with the aeronautical engineering section (pictured) a particular highlight. Our partnership continues to develop, and the college supports us across many topics by running workshops and sending students to help with events.
FundEd AUTUMN 2019 35
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