Welcome to our first whole-school challenge of the year
We wanted to introduce ourselves as the new Durrington High School SSLT (Senior Student Leadership Team); Ivy, Alfie, Billy, Amy, Morgan, Maisy, Ava and Mel. It’s great that in our first message to you we can explain about the first event we are leading on this year (starting this Monday – 20th September). We’ve called it the “Play Your Part Challenge 2021”. The challenge has been created to encourage and celebrate us all (staff and students) taking part together.
We know just how much we, as students, have missed out on over the last couple of years so it will be great to be back together as a community trying to make a real difference. We have decided to focus our challenge on the theme of reducing our own (and school’s) environmental impact. It’s big news at the moment that we need to act on climate change – we want to do our bit for our future.
Please read on for more details of the challenge and how you can help your son/daughter (and us) to make this a huge success.
So what is the “Play Your Part Challenge 2021”?
It’s simple…. together we are going to walk, jog, run 15,000km = 21 million steps using a 1km track on the school field. Why 15,000km? well this represents the distance if we were to travel to the opposite side of the earth. The environment is a global concern hence our global challenge. why 21million steps (well, we are in 2021 our year of change and also 21 million steps is approximately the same as 15,000km.
When can your son/daughter take part?
7.30am-4.30pm each day with students all getting the opportunity to take part before & after school, during their first PE lesson of the week and at breaks/lunchtimes.
How will doing this make a difference?
During the challenge week we are We really want students to make a difference in one or more ways during the challenge week. They can:
1) Raising money
We are encouraging students to be sponsored to take part in the challenge. Donations can be made in two way to two different important schemes
- Carbon capture schemes, let by the Woodland Trust charity we want to support the planting of as many trees as possible (capture more carbon!) Donations to support this can be made via our JustGiving page.
- We’d also like to encourage you to donate directly to the school (via the Parentmail system). A sponsorship link came out yesterday to your email in relation to this. Donating to the school will help us with the projects we want to deliver this year (see the last section of this email for more details of how we plan to use this money)
We have set ourselves the challenge of raising £2,021 for each of the two schemes so the more people can support the more grateful we will be.
2) Donating trainers
- As the challenge is about walking, jogging, running we decided that focusing on recycling/reusing shoes would be a great idea. Hence, we have a goal of collecting 2021 shoes (1011 pairs of trainers. These need to be in usable condition please. Once we have collected them we plan to sort them and make donations to those in need both locally and further afield via charities.
If you can help too that would be amazing; perhaps by asking family and friends to pass unwanted pairs to trainers to you. We will have a big donation box in main school reception where, during the challenge week, parents/carers can drop of pairs of shoes (thanks in advance!!)
3) Make personal pledges
- The final part of the challenge is to ask each student (and member of staff) to make a single, simple pledge, to change something in their life that will make their own carbon footprint a little bit less. We have worked with the school caters recently to introduce meat-free-Mondays and this alone is estimated to save a
We are really, really excited about the challenge (and a bit nervous as we have never organised something on this scale before!!). But we know we can do it!
How can I follow the challenge?
The best way to do this is via the school’s social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). We’ll make sure we share as many photos and distance totals during the week.
And finally:
If you are in a position where you either own/run or work for a local business we’d be really grateful if your organisation wanted to help us! We are particularly interested in bigger donations to help us fund sustainability related schemes within school including purchasing:
- recycling bins to separate out waste around the site
- and installing more water fountains across the site to facilitate a reduction in single use plastic bottles of water/drink.
- recycled multi-use water bottles to give out as prizes to students (reducing overall plastic waste in the longer term).
If you do feel you can help in this way please can we ask you to contact Mr Woodcock our Head of School on cwoodcock@durring.com
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our (long) email; we really do want make a real change this year and are asking for your support (as well as our peers and staff at Durrington) to do this. We’re looking forward to an amazing event next week (we hope it doesn’t rain!!!)
Thanks again,
Alfie, Ivy, Amy, Morgan, Billy, Mel, Ava and Maisy
Year 11 Senior Student Leadership Team
