St Martin’s pupils help less fortunate through ShoeShare
MORE than 1,100 shoes were collected by Year 6 students at St Martin’s Primary School to give to disadvantaged children in developing countries.
For one of the projects towards the Rights Respecting Schools award – the school gained the silver award recently – the students partnered with Clarks and Unicef in the ShoeShare campaign which collects old or unwanted shoes to send them around the world for re-use.
For every tonne of shoes collected, a donation is made to Unicef which goes towards education programmes around the world.
Pupil Alexa Mann said the Year 6 Rights Squad children ran the campaign themselves after doing a lot of fundraising projects independently throughout lockdown.
Lily Short added: ‘We did an assembly and asked the other students to bring in old shoes that are still in a good condition so Unicef can give them to children in other countries.’
Mia Costa said the shoes will be given to those who do not have their own and the monetary donation will go towards educational projects such as resources for teachers.
More than 59m. children of primary school age around the world are still not in education.
Clarks is helping Unicef to provide basic resources such as pens and pencils so that children have the right tools to learn, and also support training teachers and work with governments to ensure the quality and standard of education remains high and children are leaving school able to read and write.
The aim of ShoeShare is to reach even more children and improve their access to an education.
Seby Peters went round the clos where he lives asking neighbours if they had any shoes in good condition that they would like to donate and managed to gather together around 70 pairs.
Demelza Ashworth said it was important that the children at St Martin’s Primary School help others who are less fortunate than them.
‘Even if we only managed to donate one pair that would help one child, but we’ve managed to collect 1,136 pairs of shoes,’ she said.
Ruth Dallin said being a part of the Rights Respecting Schools award and taking on charitable projects like this one has shown her how lucky children in Guernsey are compared to other places in the world.
Demelza added: ‘Sometimes we take things for granted so it’s important we try and help other children with an adequate standard of living and education, too.’
Deputy head teacher Clare Giles was incredibly proud of the children’s efforts in supporting other young people both locally and globally through the award programme.
‘As they move into senior school in September, I hope they continue with their work with Rights Respecting Schools because they are great role models for other students.’
