No-one who saw the pictures or heard the news coming out of Haiti could fail to have been moved by the plight of the people whose lives had been destroyed by the terrible earthquake. The Tudor Hall motto, Habeo ut Dem, means I have that I may give and with that in mind the staff and girls set about raising as much money as we could to help with the relief effort. We set ourselves a target of £800 and organised a collection and a famine lunch, both to be held on Wednesday 20th January. As we felt that it was important to involve the whole school community, we also invited the parents to contribute to our appeal.
The donations came flooding in immediately, and we had reached the half way mark in our collection before the start of school on Wednesday. The response from pupils and staff was incredible and we had reached our £800 target by lunchtime but the donations showed no signs of slowing down. The famine lunch proved to be a very sobering experience; we usually have a wide selection of deliciously home cooked food on offer at lunchtime, so to come into the dining room and find that all we had to eat was a bowl of rice and a piece of fruit was something of a shock. Knowing that the people of Haiti were having to manage without even this most basic of food however, helped us to realise how lucky we were. The lunch raised another £320, thanks in part to the generosity of one of our regular suppliers, Fresh Direct, who donated a crate of bananas.
We have so far managed to raise over £2,200 and the appeal shows no signs of slowing down. Some of our Sixth form pupils are organising a cake sale and a car washing service in the coming weeks and we hope to reach our revised target of £2,500 very shortly.
