There will be four cabins in total, three of which will accommodate up to eight students and one staff member. The second two cabins are hoped to be completed by the end of the year.
One of the cabins will be fully accessible to disabled users and will house four students and two staff members.
‘When Le Murier School was created, the idea was for there to be an area to organise days for the students to help their development and training for different skills such as independent living,’ said David Becker, a director of the charity.
‘At the time, that never really happened and so there was a separate initiative set up by Gary Dovey, who was a teacher at the school at the time, to build next to the school a site where there would be four residential cabins that the children could use to provide the residential opportunities that they may not be getting otherwise, such as learning to cook a meal for themselves.’
As well as the cabins, the site will have a ‘village hall’, which includes a classroom, workroom and commercial kitchen, a lightweight camping area for activities such as Duke of Edinburgh, a wilderness space for environmental education and exploration, and a farm where students will care for animals and grow produce.
The total cost of the project is just under £2m. and the committee has raised two-thirds so far.
‘We’ve still got roughly £600,000 to raise. We’re making good headway and are confident that we’ll get there, but there’s still quite a bit of fundraising to go,’ said Mr Becker.
‘We’ve had some amazingly generous benefactors who have helped us thus far.’
Deloitte team complete 24-hour hour walk around Footes Lane track for Le Murier Village
TWENTY-FOUR hours after embarking on the ambitious quest of walking for a full day to raise money for Le Murier's Village, the Deloitte team concluded their mission on Saturday afternoon.
The event saw Deloitte employees and any other islanders take to the track at Footes Lane, ensuring that there was never a moment when at least someone was walking a lap.
‘We did 3,100 laps in the end, so we’re all really pleased about that,’ said Deloitte partner and charity director David Becker.
‘We had pretty much the whole office come down, so there were about 60 people at different times. A couple of us did the full 24 hours.’
The Deloitte team were also joined by some 100 schoolchildren from Le Murier, who took part in the challenge on Friday afternoon.
‘It was chaos,’ Mr Becker said. ‘But it was really nice to see the people we’re raising money for and take part together.’