This week, our Year 7 pupil, Freya, will be walking for two hours to and from school every day for a week to raise money for African Promise. Freya discovered that many children in rural Kenya need to walk over 10 kilometres every day to get to school and find that sometimes there may not be a teacher on that day. African Promise are a charity working to improve the quality of education in primary schools in Kenya and Freya wants to help too!
Freya will have walked for four hours in total (including a full day of school) before she gets home each evening. This will be a challenge, but we know that Freya will take each step with a smile.
We asked Freya how she feels about this week: “I am really excited. I know the first and last day will be the easiest, it is the days in between that I know will be a struggle. When it gets tough, I will remember who I am walking for.”
Freya’s mum, a teacher at Kingswood Prep School, spoke of how proud she is of her daughter: “When Freya first came to me with her idea to raise money for African Promise by walking to and from school every day for a week, I immediately worried it would be too much for her. We live in a rural village and I knew that this would mean walking for around four hours every day, with muddy, difficult off-road paths and steep hills to overcome. However, her sheer will and determination won me over in minutes. She loves a challenge for a good cause and wouldn’t be dissuaded. We are tremendously proud of her energy and empathy and we are all looking forward to supporting her on this journey! So far, she has raised over £1,100 through baking, talks, chores and assemblies. We hope this figure will continue to grow and that Freya will get to see the impact of her actions first hand, one day.”
Good luck Freya, we will be cheering you on each day! If you would like to follow their journey this week, find out more or donate to this cause, please click here.
Tree Planting at Kingswood
Over the weekend, the Kingswood Eco Alliance welcomed our Kingswood Community for a morning of tree planting across our sports fields. Pupils, staff, family, friends and guardians gathered to help plant 420 new trees, provided by the Woodland Trust and all pupils had the opportunity to each plant their own tree.
These trees will help to create new habitats and will increase biodiversity over time, along with reducing levels of carbon dioxide. It was lovely to see that some trees were named and held a significance beyond the environmental significance. We hope this area is a place that our pupils can visit in the future and witness the growth of their tree and efforts to healing our planet.
“This tree planting event was exciting because it allowed all members of the Kingswood community to get involved in planting trees and enhancing our local biodiversity” says Molly, one of the sustainability prefects in Year 13. “People are able to leave a legacy in the form of a tree as well as working towards a project which will help reduce the school’s carbon footprint.”
Thank you to all who participated in the planting, it was wonderful to see so many supporting a more sustainable future at Kingswood.