RAISING funds for students and families in Fort Rixon, Zimbabwe has been made into a lot of fun by some Bridgetown kids.
Eight Bridgetown Primary School students have given up some of their everyday norms to raise funds for those less fortunate than themselves. The students decided to raise funds in a different way, by taking away their own privileges in order to make it a more realistic challenge.
The idea started when year seven student Marley Davies first decided to do some fundraising by not talking for 48 hours. This was quite a feat for Marley, whose favourite pastime is talking – but she succeeded, and this quickly ignited plenty of interest from other students wanting to try something different.
"I wanted to try something different to raise some money to help out others who don't have any money to help themselves," Miss Davies said. "I decided that I would give the money that I raised to kids in Zimbabwe as they are really poor. My grandparents are involved in the 'Living Foundation' with the church, so we thought it would be good to put the money that I raised there."
Since the initial 48 hours of silence, Miss Davies teamed up with some other students in her classroom and they decided to do a number of other fundraisers.
Jess Dearle, Lucy Craven and Shannon Heron joined forces to run a cake stall, face painting and nail painting stall in the main street. This raised $513.35.
"It was really successful and it was really busy," Miss Dearle said. "I would like to thank all the people who made donations and our teacher Mr McCoy for helping us."
Around the same time, Kirsty Henning, Tilly Miller, Marley Davies, Brett Davies, Caitlin Hunt and Lewis Richings participated in another fantastic fundraiser that involved giving up shoes, showers, electronics and furniture for 48 hours. This raised $1537.35.
"We were allowed to come to school with no shoes on, which was awesome," Miss Henning said.
Brett Davies also found this part of the challenge easy. "I really like not wearing shoes so it was really easy for me," he said.
But not all students found the challenge so simple.
"The hardest part for me was giving up showers," Miss Miller said. "I found this really hard as I like to be clean. I would like to thank all the sponsors who gave so generously, because without them we couldn't have done it."
The money raised goes towards veggie gardens, crops, lots of resources in the Fort Rixon community and better houses. The students proudly presented two cheques to 'Living Foundation' representative Louise Furniss from Nannup at a school assembly.
Ms Furniss said it was fantastic to see such a great effort from these students, and it would make a huge difference to the lives of many people.