What a success

The RotaKids club at Buttsbury Junior School was formed only in February this year, but it has launched with a bang!  Deputy Head Teacher Sally Lavelle reports on a very active first five months:

“Buttsbury Junior School became part of Billericay Rotary club in February this year with Billericay Rotary presenting our school council with the prestigious new title of RotaKids. Once RotaKids was established our first important decision was to decide which charity to support. Our pupil’s charity of choice was Great Ormond Street Hospital and since then £1200 has been raised for this worthwhile cause. Our fundraisers over the course of this year have taken many forms yet at the heart of every event it has been the children organising and managing proceedings.

Our first fundraiser for GOSH involved the local community. We decided to run a lucky dip style stall called the Magic Ice Cream at Summerfest this year. Many of our RotaKids gave up their Sunday afternoon to come and help run the stall. The children thoroughly enjoyed this experience and in total £108 was raised.

Next, we organised an enterprise day in school. This involved each of our 16 classes being given £5.00 and the entrepreneurial challenge of trying to make as much profit from our starting point of £5.00 as possible. As always our pupils rose to the challenge and devised class stalls such as biscuit making, ping-pong ball challenges, selling pencil toppers; we even went as far as one class running their own funfair!! Overall, £650 was raised. A fantastic achievement!

Finally, our RotaKids went on to organise a sponsored run which involved the whole school trying to run or walk as many laps of the school field as possible in thirty minutes (See separate report).  Our pupils and staff alike really got into the spirit of the occasion with many of our children being presented with special effort awards.

This final event took our total to a whopping £1200.

RotaKids has had a really positive impact on our students this year, as it has been so led and directed by them. We look forward to raising money for other local and national charities in the upcoming year!”