Fifty nine Bradford primary school pupils have been presented with the Archbishop of York’s Young Leaders Awards after taking part in a citizenship programme.
The Bishop of Bradford, Rt Revd Toby Howarth made the presentations at Low Moor CE Primary School on Monday. The Year 4 pupils have taken part in a range of challenges to ‘be the change they want to see’ in their local, national and global communities.
These included personal challenges at home to help their family and neighbours such as cooking for their families, cleaning cars for neighbours and donating clothes and toys to charity shops.
They explored the work of UK charities and presented this to their school in an assembly and arranging a vote to decide on a charity to support. They went on to raise £235.50 for Oxfam by organising a ‘Mad Hair Day’ and cake sale for their whole school.
The pupils also went on a walk around their local community, looking for opportunities to be young leaders and to make a positive impact on the area. They decided to build hedgehog homes to leave around the local community. They designed and created their hedgehog homes from scratch using pieces of wood. The hedgehog homes have encouraged more wildlife to visit the school grounds and surrounding area, as well as encouraging others to be more considerate of wildlife.
Andy Robinson, Year 4 teacher said; “Whilst taking part in the Archbishop of York Youth Trust Award, the children developed an understanding of how they can make a positive impact on their community and how they can make a difference on a national scale. Through completing each of the projects the children have developed their collaboration skills and have become independent and confident learners. Our school has a distinctive Christian character and the project allowed the children to explore the Christian values and develop an understanding of how they can help those around them by completing various challenges.”
To date the Youth Trust have enrolled over 450 Primary and Secondary schools to the Young Leaders Awards, empowering some 50,000 young people to put leadership into action and make a difference in other people's lives through acts of service and community volunteering.
For more information on the Young Leaders Awards, visit www.abyyt.com or contact The Archbishop of York Youth Trust: 01904 231010 or youth.trust@abyyt.com