PAGEANT - "Education is the future"
Centre Academy East Anglia
Background
Centre Academy East Anglia (CAEA) is one of a group of schools specialising in the education of pupils with a broad range of learning challenges. CAEA is a co-educational school, catering for children from as young as 4 up to the age of 19. They offer both boarding and day programmes, and cap enrolment to about 50 to ensure very small classes. CAEA is located in the small Suffolk village of Brettingham, about 6 miles from Bury St Edmunds.
Fundraising for Pageant
During the academic year 2015-16, students at CAEA organised various fundraising events. They had decided to donate the money raised to Pageant, as one of the teachers remembered hearing about Pageant when she had been taught by Pageant member Anne Jackson.
The money was raised by a wide variety of activities - one seemed particularly appropriate to Pageant as it involved the students carrying water around and through a number of obstacles... The sum raised was remarkable: a total of £2,681.86 was shared equally between Pageant and the local children's hospice - and this money was raised by a school with a total of fewer than 50 students between the ages of 8 and 18.
On Friday 14th October 2016, Andrew, Anne, Pippa and Roger visited CAEA to take part in the end-of-week assembly, and were given a cheque for £1,340.93. This money would be used for a Pageant project in The Gambia to be selected during Pgeant's November 2016 visit.
The cheque was presented to Anne by Charlotte, a Senior member of the School Council.
How the money was used
On 12th May 2017 Andrew, Anne, Pippa and Roger returned to CAEA to show the students what had been done with the money they had so kindly raised for us in 2016.
The lucky recipient was Unity Nursery in Banjul. (more on our Unity Nursery page) We had visited this little school in November 2016 and found that they had expanded into another site, just across the road from the existing school. This new site had a block that would be suitable for two classrooms but needed a lot of work doing. (see the November blog for a fuller account) We agreed the estimates for the work to be done and most of it had been accomplished by February 2017 (see the February blog for details)
The photos below show what has been achieved with the CAEA donation.
new shaded seating and play area
inside one of the new classrooms
ceiling fans in a new classroom
The CAEA students were delighted to see what had been accomplished. Several of the students asked questions about our work in The Gambia and one student in particular had taken considerable interest in the political situation that had unfolded following the Presidential election in December 2016.
Once all the pictures of Unity Nursery had been shown and the questions answered we presented the school with a large, traditional wooden mask - this was, as our Gambian friends would say, very well received and the students decided to call the mask "Lamin" - extremely fitting, we thought.
