Story Book Day is a Literacy project which schools can get involved with, benefitting pupils in the UK and in Africa. Children find out about the life of a boy from The Gambia. They then take part in different Literacy activities and are asked to choose one or two of their favourite story books to donate to an African school.

Jole Rider, the charity organising the project, suggest holding your Story Book Day in the week commencing 5th July, but you can also take part later in the year.

Find out more by reading this PDF, embedded below:

Teaching in the UK may have its difficulties, but fortunately Maoist strikes are not one of them. For volunteer teachers from UK charity Our Sansar, teaching in Nepal has thrown up considerable challenges, not least of which has been the closure of the schools by a countrywide shutdown. But with the schools now open again, they have been experiencing the challenges and rewards of teaching in one of the world’s poorest countries.

For the next year, Bethan Pink from Richmond and John Buckley from Twickenham will be teaching and organising interschool activities for disadvantaged students in and around Hetauda, a city in Nepal’s green but impoverished south. They will also be working with the local schools to establish education programs for street children.

‘The scenery is very beautiful and the family [we’re staying with] has been lovely to us,’ says Bethan, who previously taught at Lancasterian Primary School, London. ‘There are so many ideas I have for improving the running of the school, such as trying to change the attitude to time keeping; trying to make the classrooms nicer places to be by sweeping the floors, putting up cheerful displays and removing dangerous obstacles; trying to influence the teachers to use more interactive approaches to teaching…We’ll see what can be done with all these ideas.’

Bethan and John arrived in Nepal in late April and are currently based at Shree Kamala Lower Secondary School. Both are experienced professionals who will bring valuable skills to a school that currently has just 9 teachers for over 330 pupils.

The school day has 7 periods and the teachers swap between classrooms to teach their specialist subject. ‘Lessons are quite dull to be honest,’ adds Bethan. ‘[They] rely heavily on call and repeat. I would like to try and have an impact on this.

Adapting to the severe lack of resources, Bethan says that she has been making simple things at home and improvising with whatever is around her.
‘The school has a small library that looks quite cheery,’ she continues. ‘Otherwise classrooms are very bare with only desks and a chalkboard. The library has a copy of an EKTA scheme of learning for English, called Harmony, but they have only 1 copy of each book and with no photocopier, it’s pretty hard to use for the classes. Other text books which are quite inadequate are being used.’

Our Sansar will be sending another experienced teacher to Kathmandu in June and hopes to be able to send a further 7 to schools in Janakpur, Kathmandu and Hetauda before the end of the year. The project will help 50 street children and over 3000 school children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Would you like to be involved in future projects? To find out more, visit www.oursansar.org.

World leaders have promised that all children will have a primary education by 2015 but with only 5 years left to go, there are still 75 million children missing out on an education completely.

1Goal, organized by the Global Campaign for Education, aims to get more children around the world a school place. The theme for 2010 is ’1GOAL’ to link in with the World Cup in South Africa.

www.sendmyfriend.org

There are three simple steps for schools to get involved:

• Make a gigantic 1GOAL supporter scarf,
• Hold a 1GOAL event (or assembly) in your school,
• Make it count! – by sending the scarf to the Prime Minister and adding the number of 1GOAL supporters in your school to the online Scoreboard.

Watch a Youtube video about the project below:

Find out more, and discover lots of useful teaching resources, at the Send My Friend website.

Wrong Trousers Day 2010 asks the nation to wear their pyjamas with pride to school or nursery. This is all to show support for sick children in local hospitals and hospices. This year’s event takes place on Friday 25th June 2010.

www.wrongtrousersday.org

You can find out more by visiting www.wrongtrousersday.org or by calling 0845 6001 924. You will then be sent a free fundraising pack to use on the day. A host of Pyjama party games and activities will also be available to download on the website soon.

Friendship Funday is Save the Children’s national fundraising day in primary schools. They are on a mission to find schools that want to have fun, celebrate friendship, and help save children’s lives.

Your school can join the fun and:

• enrich your teaching of children’s rights,
• deliver aspects of the global citizenship curriculum,
• strengthen the ‘friendly’ ethos of your school,
• deliver on the Healthy Schools initiative and SEAL’s relationship-themed topic,
• demonstrate the values of Every Child Matters.

More than 100,000 children have taken part in recent years. The online friendship is already buzzing with activity. Want to join them? Register online or call the charity on 020 7012 6400. Once registered, Save the Children will also send you stickers, posters and balloons and may be able to arrange for one of their volunteer speakers to visit your school –a perfect way to introduce their work and the difference your fundraising will make.

Here is a Youtube video showing how your Friendship Funday can help people in Kroo Bay, Sierra Leone.

Practical Action are a development charity who are offering lots of free resources for schools, linked to their work in helping some of the world’s poorest people to transform their lives for the better.

www.practicalaction.org.uk/education

The Education area of their site has a wide range of content for teachers and pupils, including:

• Videos showing how designers make their sustainable products (useful for DT).
• A sustainability handbook for teachers of Design and Technology.
• Free posters, homework activities, wordsearches, classroom activities, videos and songs linked to renewable energy.
• A selection of experiments, demonstrations and activities which can be used to support work linked to climate change.
• Cross-curricular videos and lesson activities.

Plan is one of the largest child-centred community development organisations in the world, helping children and their families in 48 of the poorest countries to break the cycle of poverty. In the countries where they work, one out of five children die before the age of five, and the ones who survive often go hungry and have no chance of learning to read and write.

www.plan-ed.org

Plan also offer a comprehensive site for teachers which offers free teaching resources, video clips, photos, fact sheets and more, all linked to the countries where they work. You can also find out about the projects that Plan are supporting, as well as find out how your school can support the work that they are doing.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity are running a week of Peter Pan themed fundraising activities and a Guinness World Record attempt in aid of the charity. The week runs from 26th to 30th April and thousands of people will be taking part in the biggest ever Peter Pan dress up day on Friday 30th April.

www.gosh.org

Visit the site to register, find instructions about getting involved in the Guinness World Record attempt and download a fundraising toolkit for ideas to try during the week.

Cake A Difference is a brand new fundraising initiative for Bliss. Bliss is a charity dedicated to helping premature and sick babies throughout the UK and it is only through voluntary donations and fundraising that they are able to carry out their work.

From 8-14 February 2010, they are asking primary schools to support Bliss by organising cake sales during the week leading up to Valentine’s day. This is a fantastic opportunity to involve teachers, parents and pupils in an event that everyone can take part in. You’ll also be making a real difference to the lives of babies born too soon, too small or too sick.

www.cakeadifference.org

Visit www.cakeadifference.org for more information, to download a variety of Cake a Difference posters or find some more scrumptious recipes.

Sport Relief is calling all school teachers to join in one of the UK’s biggest fundraising events in 2010 and get the whole school kitted out and active in Sport Relief Socks.

The super-simple scheme enables schools to bulk buy Sport Relief Socks from www.sportrelief.com/schools and sell them for just £2 a pair to pupils, parents and of course teachers. For the first time this year, as an extra incentive, Sport Relief’s friends at Sainsbury’s will give schools one Active Kids voucher for every pair of Socks purchased through the Sport Relief Sock Deposit Scheme. This means that schools can collect 20 vouchers per box of Sport Relief Socks. Schools can choose to pay an initial deposit of just 60p per pair and then pay the remainder (£1.40) after the event, so 20 pairs of Sport Relief Socks can be ordered for a £12 deposit per box – it’s that simple.

But that’s not all; there are hundreds of other ways that schools can rise to the challenge for Sport Relief and by taking part, students will be part of a campaign that’s active, inclusive and fun. And, the best bit is, all the cash raised will help people living unimaginably tough lives both across the UK and the world’s poorest countries.

For more fantastic fundraising ideas, take a look at the Sport Relief teaching kits, available for free now from www.sportrelief.com/schools.