March 10, 2015

PRESS RELEASE

Date: Spring Term 2014

Anonymous donation of £700 to Forest World Challenge Students

Forest School students have set their sights on a World Challenge Expedition to the Andes and the Amazon in 2015, but they need to raise £4,495 each to secure their place on the team.

The group made up of Year 10 and 11 pupils have a number of fund raising schemes planned, but began their fund raising efforts by packing bags at Sainsbury’s Winnersh. Whilst helping shoppers they met, spoke and impressed a local resident so much that she offered them a very generous £700 donation.

The lovely donor wishes to remain anonymous but said, “I spoke to some of your pupils at Sainsbury’s, who wereraising money for a trip to South America to work on various charityprojects. My husband passed away at the end of last year. He was an ex pupil of The Forest School, and always spoke highly of his time at the school during the 1970s. I thought, maybe I could make a small donation to assist the boys in taking their project forward, providing them with a wonderful opportunity, as part of their education.”

World Challenge organise life-changing leadership development expeditions around the world for young people. The expedition will provide them with a wealth of new skills which they will find invaluable in school, at university and in the world of work.

What sets this apart from other school trips is that the students will have the added responsibility of fundraising £4,495 each to secure their place on the team.

Forest Teacher Richard Walker leads the World Challenge Expeditions said,

“The Forest School has partnered with World Challenge to run expeditions to far flung corners of the earth for over twenty years now.Under the watchful eye of qualified adults, participants have to plan, implement and evaluate all the logistics of their expedition from the first fundraising event all the way to the end when they touch down in Heathrow 18 months later. They will have to look after themselves and each other for a whole month, with no help from mum or dad!!”

The expedition in the summer of 2015 sees the boys do a mountain and rain forest trek, and a community project - which usually involves some healthy manual labour.

The great value of this trip is that through being made to take responsibility, the boys do a lot of growing up, in a very short space of time and have an incredible experience along the way.”

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