Congratulations to all the teams at King William’s College, Ballakermeen High School and Castle Rushen High School who have now participated in their in-school heats. There were some great presentations and some tricky decisions for the judges to make! Going through to the grand final are the following teams:

King Williams College – The Virtual Doctors

Ballakermeen High School – Disability Africa

Castle Rushen High School – Village Africa

The remaining schools have their in-school heats after half-term.

Regardless of whether they were selected to represent the school or not, all the teams gained some useful perspective on the world of charities and international development as well as the opportunity to practise some valuable skills such as teamwork, communication, public speaking and time-management. Well done to you all!

Welcome back to the new term! This is the time when you start to bring everything together and create your presentation. You may still be doing some advocacy work for your charity but it’s crucial you now start to plan and put into action what you have learned.

I’ll be coming round to deliver the fourth and final seminar – which is all about preparing for your presentation – so I’ll talk to you more in the next few days. If you’ve got any worries or concerns, do ask me questions or come and have a chat after the talk.

See you soon!

Here are the links to the two introductory videos on the Sustainable Development Goals:

Welcome back after your half-term break. This is a reminder of what should be on your horizon for this half-term:

Contacting your charities – hopefully you have already done this but, if not, please get in touch and introduce yourselves asap. Your charity contact will be a great source of information and can also help you with understanding the goals and mission of their organisation.

Finding a case study – again, your charity will help you find a case study and there may be a choice. Pick one that you can relate to so you can bring this element alive for others.

Advocacy – you should also be working on raising awareness of your charity and/or the issues that it is dealing with. You can choose to do this as you wish but if you are putting an assembly, lesson or media release together, please check back with your charity that you have the correct facts and information.

Basically, the key message is to keep in touch with your charity as you progress through your fact finding, advocacy and start pulling your presentation together!

I will be in to talk about the Sustainable Development Goals and give you tips on your presentation over the next few weeks but if you have any problems in the meantime, please get in touch.

Thanks to all the students and the charities who took part in our Meet the Charity Day today. Next step is for the student teams to let us know by 5pm Tuesday 3rd October what their top 3 charity choices are. If possible also let us know what sort of topics you are interested in e.g. health, children, education etc to help with the allocation.

It was great to see so much enthusiasm and interest today – and so many teams! It’s shaping up to be a great Charity Challenge programme.

Our Meet the Charities Day, where you can come and find out more information about your charity choices, is now confirmed for Thursday 28th September. Your link teacher will let you know the times your school is attending and any travel arrangements needed. We look forward to seeing you there!

We will shortly be bringing you information on this year’s One World Charity Challenge – our fantastic education programme that connects Year 12 students to some amazing people working in the field of international development.

If you are just starting sixth form, look out for this opportunity to learn more about some of the big issues in the world, how people are making a positive difference to the lives of others, and what skills and knowledge you can enhance by taking part!

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part in the final last night. Thank you to our sponsors, Gary and Susan Clueit, who made the event possible. A big thank you to AFD Software as well, for providing the facilities and all important technical support, and for sponsoring the AFD award for advocacy.

The results were as follows:

5th place – £500 award: QEII High School, representing the International Refugee Trust

4th place – £700 award: Castle Rushen High School, representing Hospice Africa

3rd place – £1,000 award: King William’s College, representing Gumboots UK

2nd place – £2,000 award: St Ninian’s High School, representing Tree Aid – also awarded the AFD Advocacy prize of £1,000 together with the shield for Advocacy

1st place – £4,000 award and the Frances Davidson cup: Ballakermeen High School, representing Advantage Africa

All the students completing the Charity Challenge this year have done amazing work – really well done to everyone involved.

There was a very close competition at St Ninian’s High school yesterday. Following a lot of deliberation by the judges, the last finalist has now been announced, completing the line-up for Finals evening on 30th March. The results were as follows:

Tree Aid: Finalist

The following teams were awarded £150 towards the work of their chosen charity:

Bees Abroad

UK Langa Township pre-school Trust

Bouncing Ball Trust

Well done again to everyone involved. A fitting end to the in-school competitions this year!

We had an amazing in-school competition at Ballakermeen High School last night.

The team representing Advantage Africa were chosen to be the well deserved finalists. All the other teams also produced great presentations and all have been awarded £150 from sponsorship funds for the work of their charities, as listed below:

Seed Madagascar

Cohere Charity

Afrinspire

Build it International

Thank you again to everyone involved.