We are a small, rural, primary school in Arkholme, Lancashire with just 98 children, including our nursery children. We love where we live and we love the incredible places we can go to here in the North West - places which can back up our learning in the classroom. Our headteacher, Mrs Joy Ingram, has always encouraged and supported these trips as she recognises how memorable and inspirational such trips are.
In order to get the children anywhere the staff have to take them on a minibus or coach, whether that's to sports events, music events or curriculum supporting outings like museums and castles. Travel costs have gone through the roof. To take our Yr5 and Yr6 to Skipton Castle, just one trip, will cost us over £450 for the coach alone! It also makes us reliant upon the availability of coaches in the area, which limits the choice of days and hours we can go. We would love to have been able to attend The Big Sing, but could not subsidise the costs involved of sending a class to an evening event. We would love to raise funds for things in the school playground, but the PTFA subsidises half of the travel expenses already, to keep trips affordable for parents, and so this puts a big dent in our resources.
So we want to try and buy our own school minibus - a 17 seater which is setup so that staff with a regular driving licence can drive it. That way we can take one of our classes out when it works for us, to the places and for the hours we would like to, without the expense of hiring a vehicle every single time. We don't need a brand new one, just a great quality secondhand one. But for that we still need £30k!
As a small school of about 75 families, it's hard to raise the initial capital by ourselves. We are giving it a good bash, as we are putting on lots of fun events to give it a try. We have our first Colour Run in May. We also have some staff and PTFA members willing to throw themselves out of a plane (with parachute!) to try and raise more sponsorship. We will have the Summer Festival at the end of June and are trying to organise another Big Summer Raffle to take place at the same time.
However, £30k is still a massive target for us, so we need help.
Could you donate to our fundraising target? We only need 30,000 people willing to give us £1, or just 3,000 people willing to donate £10. Plus we will be raising money ourselves at all our fundraising events.
Mrs Ingram is retiring at the end of this school year, after 13 years of leading the way not only educationally, but also quite literally as our qualified minibus driver! If you could help us raise the funds we need for our own "Joy-mobile", adapted for any staff member to drive and ready for action whenever needed, it would be fantastic as we can maintain her vision into the next school year.
So please help if you can. We would hugely appreciate it in getting us all aboard "The Joy-mobile!"