St Martin's new initiative - Global Neighbours!
It's great to see the school community back to school today.
I wanted to let you all know of an initiative I told the children about today, that we actually worked on a couple of years ago, and will be refocussing on moving forwards - the Global Neighbours scheme. This is a Christian Aid initiative, all about fighting the issues of poverty and injustice in the world. The aims of the initiative are to help children understand these key issues of poverty and injustice, and to encourage them to be 'agents of change' - towards making God's world a better place, and to be 'courageous advocates' - people who speak up for others when their voice cannot be heard.
We talked in worship today about how we actually managed to achieve the Bronze level Global Neighbours award in March 2020, just from what we already did! Our link to Bukuya, our focus on pupil voice meaning that children's opinions matter, and the fact that many global neighbour ideas and subject matter were already built into our curriculum. This didn't get the shout-out it should have had, as of course covid took over in March 2020! However, we now want to grow this concept within our school, and take it forwards even more. Yes, we'd like to achieve the silver award - but the benefits to our children are so much more than an award. Our school vision says we want to help make God's world a better place - this is a way to really focus on that.
So - you'll be hearing these terms regularly moving forwards, and we'd love for you to use these terms at home as well - agents of change, courageous advocacy, and injustice. Big words, but we will be striving for all children to understand and use them - and believe in them!
Mrs Rennison