A determined group of Acle students with lots to offer has travelled to Tanzania to help children who have so little.
For all schools the end of the Christmas term can be a slightly fraught place to be. Slightly over-tired and excited children (and staff!) rush around with thoughts of the holiday that is just round the corner. The break in routine doesn’t help as the teaching timetable gets increasingly altered to accommodate Nativity and school play rehearsals, extra assemblies and various Christmas-themed celebrations. It’s all great fun but exhausting and frenetic.
In the midst of it all, we sometimes forget the importance of simple quiet reflection, time to look back and consider what is important and what really matters. Most children tend to become fixated at this time of the year on one thing only – the glorious act of unwrapping as many presents on Christmas Day as possible. If we were all honest, even as adults we all enjoy being given a present or two.
However, kindness and generosity don’t need to come just gift-wrapped, they can come in all sorts of different ways. We will be reminding the children as the term draws to a close at Beeston that their acts of kindness and generosity towards each other will be greatly appreciated, perhaps more so than the one wrapped in Christmas paper.
A very happy Christmas to you all.
Out of Africa
A determined group of Acle students with lots to offer has travelled to Tanzania to help children who have so little.
Eleven students from Acle Academy have returned from an extraordinary trip to Tanzania where they helped to build and decorate a kitchen for a school in a village in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The young people, aged 14 and 15, had spent months raising money through hard work and ingenious charity events to help fund their trip and to pay for project work with children in Africa. They were initially part of a multi-school trip to Kenya, but this was cancelled just weeks before they were due to travel to Nairobi because of an escalation in the threat of danger in the country. Determined to find a new outlet for their efforts, the group of 10 girls and one boy with two members of staff from Acle Academy secured a placement in Tanzania with the Madadventurer project and spent a week working at the school there, renovating the building, leading lessons, playing with the children and giving gifts collected from their supporters in Norfolk. They also visited an orphanage to deliver knitted clothes for the infants there. The students ended their visit with a safari, before returning to Acle where they have been preparing presentations to give to fellow pupils and community to share what they have learned from the eye-opening experience.
