Blog: Thank you Newport!!!

This week we have another wonderful fundraising event to report on. Last summer Claire Wyatt joined Bekka in Tanzania and spent some time at the orphanage where she was a great hit with the kids (of course!).

Claire and Loveness

When she got back to England, Claire helped to organise Charities' Week at Newport Free Grammar School in Essex, where The Small Things was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the charities for 2012.

Claire and her school managed to raise an impressive and much appreciated £872. A huge thank you from the Small Things to everyone involved!

Here, Claire tells us a bit more about it all:

"The first week of December marked the start of Charities' Week, an annual Newport tradition led directly by sixth formers. This year’s festivities proved to be an undoubted success, with the whole school joining together to raise money for an extremely worthy cause: ‘The Small Things,’ which I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit in July 2012.

For five consecutive days all sixth formers took part in a number of different events including wearing their best fancy dress costumes - to the amusement of the whole school. From superheroes and villains to 150 Where’s Wally lookalikes, the spirit of fundraising was really captured by everyone involved.

Other notable events included the notorious Miss Newport, with some of the finest males the sixth form has to offer fighting it out to win the coveted tiara and title. Manliest Man also proved to be a real success, with 12 brave contestants pitting their wits against each other to complete a series of grueling challenges. The week was rounded off with a teacher talent competition, which included entries from Mr Hesketh, Miss Thompson and Mr Norman but with the most memorable entry being provided by the creative arts departments. Furthermore, the annual students vs. basketball had a good crowd come to see the staff show their stuff! Newport’s Got Talent showcased the talent that Newport has to offer with bands and solo performers battling it out. The excellent attendance at each event from pupils from every year group demonstrated the real togetherness and community spirit within the school, and the unrivalled comedic value of the lunchtime entertainment.

As a volunteer at the orphanage I know how far this money will go to help and I’m glad as a school we have personalised this money for The Small Things; a lot of hard work went into organising these events from the Head girl and boy and senior prefects. I look forward to returning to the orphanage in future years and seeing where this money has been used. It is incredible to see what previous fundraising at Newport has done: having raised money to help fund Pendo’s education as a school it has been rewarding to hear how well she is doing at school."

And here are some great Charities' Week photos:

This all looks a lot of fun, and the best part is that the children in Nkoaranga get to benefit from some Sixth Formers getting dressed up 6704 miles away! They are very appreciative:

Pendo (6) says thank you!

And the Newport Sixth Formers aren't the only ones having fun...

You may remember seeing pictures of the kids demonstrating their art skills – painting pictures and making paper snakes? This was all down to the hard work of a volunteer called Ashley Ferro – an art therapist who was working with the outreach project ‘Walk In Love’. This project is run by a fantastic woman called Aubree Packard who handles many other projects in the area. Unfortunately, Ashley has now returned home and so is unable to continue the joy and messiness that was the art classes.

However, Amani – the local man who is giving the kids music lessons (see our Facebook page for anecdotes from their class this week!) helped Ashley run these classes, and has asked if he can continue to run them himself! He said that he's studied art for years and would love to continue that with the kids, since he really enjoyed doing it with Ashley during her volunteer period. In the future, he wants to be a music, art, and drama teacher. We are really excited that the classes will hopefully be able to resume, and look forwards to telling you more about them (look forward to Bekka’s blog update next week!)!

Until then, some pictures from the amazing classes which Ashley ran, helped by Amani!