Dorothy Reid took part in GLP in 2014 and had great fun during the fund-raising stage, using it to also get the school and local community involved. Dorothy is based in Macduff Primary School.
Here are some of the activities and ideas Dorothy came up with to raise her Rwanda funds in the school and local community:
One Sweet Idea
My most successful fundraiser, always going on quietly and industrially in the background, was selling tablet. A local chip shop lady, Morag sold at least two batches a week. Sometimes three or four dependent on what was going on in the area. I was able to pull back at least £11.00 from each batch. A local garage, a beautician, sheltered housing, some friends on social media, the local Academy and my own school were all also involved in selling the tablet.
Kin ya learn Kinyarwanda?
A few hundred pounds was raised by the children in my school asking friends and relatives to help them with a sponsored ‘learn Kinyarwanda’ (the official language of Rwanda). I gave class teachers list of Kinyarwanda words which they then asked their class to decide on the ones that I most needed to learn. ‘Toilet’ and ‘How much?’ were two important ones. ‘Candle,’ ‘water,’ and ‘mosquito,’ were also important and helped the children understand about the environment I was going to travel to.
I encouraged the children to say Kinyarwanda words to me in school so I could try and learn them. I explained to them that they were very lucky to be young because young children learn new things much easier than older people like me. I really, really needed their help!
We’re all going on a, gorilla holiday
The ‘guess where the Rwandan gorilla would like to go on holiday’ game. This was a game of squares where you had to pay to ‘take’ an African or European country. I created a map on our Smartboard where the children in my class coloured it in. We took it to a few local shops and my local dentist’s surgery to gather funds, charging at £1 a country. The winner was to receive a special gift, hand-picked for them in Rwanda. Our local librarian won and she was given a beautiful Rwandan rag doll on my return.
On Yer Bike!
I also borrowed my daughter’s exercise bike which travelled around the classes. We worked out how far it was to travel to Rwanda and each child had to cycle for a given time each day and record the running total until the distance was achieved. The children also had the opportunity to say how they felt after their exercise and perhaps leave words of wisdom to help me on my travels.
Community Visits and further Fundraising
I visited a few local groups and our sheltered housing complex to give a talk and presentation of what I was going to do in Rwanda. I was donated money from these groups too and went back on my return to let them know how my adventure went (I was then given more money by these groups to donate to the schools I had visited!)
When one of the teachers from our cohort went back to Rwanda, I knitted an Arran throw with patterns called Tree of Life and Flower Garden which I raffled off and raised a few hundred pounds to help her with her fund-raising. We also had a few competitions within school, the prizes for which were usually Rwandan pin badges.
