Four Marks School’s Work Tackling Global Poverty Recognised with Christian Aid Award

From lobbying the council to work to reduce its carbon footprint and reduce plastic waste to spending time with residents of our local care home, pupils and staff at Four Marks Primary School have been working hard to take their place as global citizens.

Four Marks Church of England Primary School has achieved Bronze Award status in Christian Aid’s Global Neighbours scheme in recognition of its wide-ranging steps to love their global neighbour.

The accreditation scheme celebrates schools that are helping pupils learn about global poverty and the Christian responsibility to tackle it, as well as giving them the tools to play a confident part in creating a fairer world.

Mrs Stoodley said: “We are thrilled to be recognised for the work we have done as a whole school community to raise awareness of the extreme inequalities across our globe and perhaps more importantly, the steps we can take to address these. The pupils learn about global issues regularly and gain an understanding of injustice in our world. A visitor from the Toilet Twinning charity explained to the children that there are millions of people in the world without a toilet. They talked about what life is like without a toilet for these communities, with the implications for health, dignity and safety. Our School Council decided that they would like each class to work to twin our school toilets with toilets overseas; each class has been working hard to organise fundraising activities to achieve this target. Year 5 and 6 pupils have also planted a bee friendly garden in our school grounds after learning about the importance of bees, and why we should protect them. They planted bee-friendly plants and produced information leaflets which were displayed in school.

“We are developing links with a community in Uganda through the charity ‘Education Uganda’, and we at Four Marks will be twinned with Bwera Church of England School, in Uganda. We have started our journey by writing letters to the children of Bwera school to tell them about our school and to ask questions to find out more about them. We took part in Christian Aid’s scheme because it gives us a practical way of living out our school values of Love and Equality.

“Our world is increasingly connected and our hope is for our children to grow as responsible global citizens who care about issues such as the environment and access to healthcare. The children have especially enjoyed teaching each other about Environmental Issues such as reducing plastic and looking after our oceans. They have enjoyed the challenge of thinking up active and creative ways to raise money for their twinned toilets, which have included making Christmas Cards, stress toys, making chocolate toilets’.

Caroline Weir, Education Coordinator at Christian Aid, said: “The Global Neighbours Scheme was launched in partnership with the Church of England’s Education Office with a vision of helping young people understand more about the inequalities in this world and helping them to become courageous advocates for those who have no voice.

It’s wonderful to see how staff and pupils at Four Marks have taken this to heart and are seeking to tackle injustice.