The pupils in Year 4 at Joy Lane School, Whitstable tell us how they showed their support for the refugee families who had recently moved into their area.
We chose to support the local refugee families for two reasons: they lived very close to our school and we wanted to convince our parents that they needn’t be uneasy about the asylum seekers being so near to our school.
To start off with we wrote letters home to our parents asking them to support us in our project, especially with helping us to research how to help refugee families more. We used our persuasive writing techniques that we learned in English class to write emotive and thought-provoking letters that had a really positive impact with our parents! We felt so happy!
After this we teamed up with the charity The Rotary Club and we started collecting for ‘treat boxes’ to give to the refugee families. To gather donations we once again wrote persuasive letters back to the families of the children in school asking for their help in giving the items we needed.
We also wanted to raise money through a raffle. We asked the PTA and Governors of the school to donate prizes to the raffle which we then used our art skills to design posters for.
We felt like we made a real difference in bringing some joy to the lives of the refugee families living near our school. But the biggest difference was the change in the mind set of our parents – it went from feeling uneasy around the families to wholeheartedly supporting them! This is a big win and we are so proud of what we’ve achieved. This just goes to show that Make a Difference Challenge is not just about physical actions but about helping people see important issues in new ways.
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