Day of the African Child

It was a lovely day of sunshine, fun and excitement as the children got to experience a range of activities throughout the day. This included African drumming, hearing African tales and stories, performing an African dance and singing songs. They also had the chance to meet and present our 'safer schools' posters to MP Matt Western and there was a video link to some children in Bo- where we sang and danced with children half way across the world!

Mrs Atkins' Trip to Bo

Mrs. Atkins journeyed to Bo, in Africa, this February where she spent a fortnight working with children and staff at our twinned school, BDEC Messima School. Mrs. Atkins had a very warm welcome by the Bo community. In one of our assemblies, we were actually able to make a Skype link with the school and were able to see and hear the Messima pupils sing to us.

One of Mrs Atkins’ first experiences was to visit and use the well that was funded by money raised by St. Margaret’s families. Mrs Atkins has sent her thanks to all the families that have donated to our current collection for BO, anyone wishing to make a donation can still do so via School Money website or send cash via the school office. You can read more about our OWL on the school website:

Mrs Atkins and the other Warwick District Teachers who accompanied her on the trip will be hosting a feedback meeting for any interested families and friends on Monday 19th March in St Margaret’s School hall from 4-5pm when they will share photos and stories of their visit.

LATEST NEWS - THE WELL IS FINISHED! 

We were overjoyed to hear that work on the well is complete and that the pupils at our link school, BDEC Messima, now have access to fresh water at their their school.

Follow this link to see video footage of the well in action on the One World Link website. The children are so delighted, they sing 'If you're happy and you know it, say 'Thank you'".

http://oneworldlink.org.uk/bdec-school-messimas-new-pump/

In December 2015, St Margaret's Junior School were delighted to be linked with BDEC Messima School in Bo, Sierra Leone through Leamington Spa's long established One World Link (OWL).

Our first challenge was to collect pencil crayons and felt tips for the school. Our families responded amazingly with enough to fill a small suitcase being sent in. Pupils also wrote letters and sent posters for OWL's 'Keeping Safe' project. In January 2016, Mrs Atkins' husband visited the school in Bo to hand deliver them. Children and staff alike were thrilled with their gifts!

Whilst visiting the BDEC Messima, he discovered that the school has no electricity or running water. After seeing the school first hand and taking lots of photographs, Mr Atkins returned to the UK with reply letters, posters about safety in Sierra Leone (including Ebola safety) and the idea to fundraise money to build BDEC Messima a well was born.

On Monday 23rd May 2016, every child at St Margaret's took part in a sponsored Water Walk.  We walked the perimeter of our school field carrying 2 litres of bottled water to imagine what it must be like to have to walk to a well to collect clean water every day. By June 10th, over £3500 of sponsor money had been collected - more than enough to build a well in Sierra Leone!

Congratulations and an enormous thank you to all our amazing families for this outstanding reponse to this worthy cause. We are absolutely delighted that the funds to build the well have been raised all in one go! We and One World Link have started the process of safely transferring the money to BDEC Messima.

Watch this space to keep up to date with progress of the building of the well.

On Monday 10th October 2016, we were lucky to receive a visit from Ms Tenneh Koruma who teaches at our link school BDEC Messima in Bo. She arrived at school with Mrs Liz Garrett (Schools Link Coordinator for One World Link - OWL) and Mr Paul Atkins who visited Bo on our behalf last January.

In our whole school assembly, we celebrated our link, sang the OWL link school anthem ‘You are my brother’ and presented Tenneh with a cheque for 17, 380, 000 Leones raised through our sponsored ‘Water Walk’ last term. Tenneh enjoyed her visit enormously and was delighted with the pupils’  singing. She thanked the children and their families for their wonderful fundraising and told us that she would keep the school up to date with how the well is coming along. Later, she was given a tour of the school, admiring our bright colourful classrooms, our well stocked library and our fabulous computer room in particular.