This year the theme of our Harvest Festival is Homes. In their classrooms, the children have been thinking about their homes and families and the Harvest Festival will give us the opportunity to consider those less fortunate than us in other countries.
This year we will share our Harvest food amongst people in Almondbury who are elderly, ill or housebound. Please send any gifts of food to school on 11th and 12th of October. After the Harvest Festival it will be made into parcels which the children will deliver locally.
This year we would also like to support the Shelter Box scheme run by the charity Shelter. Following the Asian Tsunami in December 2004 and the Kashmiri earthquake in 2005, Shelter sent emergency boxes which provide shelter and warmth for up to 10 people for a prolonged period. Each box contains a 10 person tent, 10 sleeping bags, a multi-fuel cooker, cooking pots, a spade, rope and other essentials. The box itself can be used in many ways, for water, storage, a baby’s cot, a table, etc. The cost of a complete Shelter Box is £490. We are therefore asking for donations of money, no matter how small, as part of our Harvest Festival. Shelter suggest that children could help to raise the money by doing chores at home for £1 a time, for example.
Once a donation has been received by Shelter, the school will be advised of its box number. This number will enable the school to trace the box it helped to fund to its final destination. All the children will be asked to sign a School Signature Card which will be enclosed in the box. Donations of less than the cost of a box are used to purchase individual items toward a complete box, all items being obtained from UK suppliers at less than trade price. Assuming a box is used for 6 months, this equates to shelter and warmth for less than 30p per person per day. So far over 300,000 people in 24 countries have been helped. For more information please click to look at the official website www.shelterbox.org.
Please come and join us in school to celebrate our Harvest Festival. All the children will be taking part. Also, please send us the names of any sick or elderly people that you know who live in the village, so that we can add them to our list.
Help is also needed to assist with the packaging of gifts.
The children and teachers will distribute the gifts on Friday 13th October. If you can spare some time to help with the preparation of the gifts for distribution on the morning of Friday 13th October, please have a word with Mrs Sweeney in the school office. It usually takes just over an hour to prepare the parcels. If you have the time, you are then invited to accompany a class as they deliver the gifts.
