St Anne´s School – A Small School With An Enormous Heart

ANNE'S SCHOOL – A SMALL SCHOOL WITH AN ENORMOUS HEART

St Anne's School is a small independently owned British school in the district of Chamartín, founded in 1969, with about 450 students, from 3 to 18 years old. We have a long tradition of fund-raising activities for a range of different causes. This year we decided to dedicate all our efforts to supporting the Pablo Ugarte Association (APU), which finances research projects to find a vaccine to combat Childhood Cancer. Always believing it is best to aim high, we set our target at the extremely ambitious 35,000 euros.

We began our campaign on January 25^th by holding awareness sessions in the school, in which researchers supported by the APU explained the important projects they are working on at present. In addition, a very brave young lady who has lived through this illness spoke to our students about her own experience. This helped our students to understand the tremendously valuable role of the APU in the fight against childhood cancer.

Secondly, on January 28^th  we launched a campaign on social networks, challenging parents, relatives, friends and acquaintances to upload videos to social networks showing as many people as possible "Taking a leap for Childhood Cancer", and challenging other families to do the same, while at the same time donating to the APU through a link on ihelp, with the hashtags # stannescharitychallenge # yoAPUsalto. Our Primary and Secondary teams of teachers were the first to post their jumping videos, and many families and friends followed their example. The challenge has been enormously successful, with over 200 videos posted, showing huge creativity and imagination. More importantly, on-line donations have to date reached almost 10,000 euros! You can still participate by doing your own APUjump!

Finally, on February 15, the World Day Against Childhood Cancer, the entire school day was devoted to a host of fund-raising activities.

In the morning each class took part in a sponsored event to raise funds. Our Primary students enjoyed participating in a dance marathon, those in our Secondary Department skipped for a whole hour and our Bachillerato students undertook a fun-run. In addition, a team of our most valiant teachers tap-danced for 6 hours, all to raise funds through sponsors.

The highlight of our Charity Challenge came in the afternoon with our mammoth School Fair. Thanks to the wonderfully generous donations from our parents, we were able to hold an incredibly successful auction, with items such as signed football shirts, stays in hotels, and VIP tickets for the next Real Madrid v Barcelona match. We also had a grand raffle, with well over 100 excellent prizes donated by families.  There was a concert given by "The Lovehearts", a group formed by some of our teachers and their friends, and a large selection of workshops and games: a Toy Tombola, a Teddy Tombola, a Terror Tunnel, Face-painting, Food stalls, a Magic Show, and many more fun activities.

Our goal of reaching 35,000 euros to help fight against childhood cancer, however ambitious it might have seemed, now seems well within our grasp!  Let's see if we can make it!

Photo Credit : Melisa Walker Horn

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