Baha’s Story

It all started in 2013 with a rainbow and then there was a pedal powered cinema, a giant gorilla made of spoons, a meeting with Uri Geller and royalty and a block of joy…

In 2013 our Eco Officers were awarded a certificate in recognition of the good work they had promoted around recycling and composting. We had new recycling bins for our school waste and an impressive population of worms ready, willing and able to devour the waste products from children’s daily fruit snacks. A rainbow was created as a symbol of our good work in this aspect of our Eco Award (see photo below) and our Eco Officers attended an awards ceremony. When they came back to school we were inspired and we realised we could do A LOT MORE and make links beyond Ellesmere Port…

Next, we submitted a bid to see if we could get the ‘Great Ape Film Initiative’ pedal-powered cinema to visit our school. We were one of 10 schools in Cheshire to be successful in this. Denis Agaba came to our school from Uganda and told us about the plight of the Great Apes. There are five kinds of great apes: orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and gibbons.

When Denis got back to Uganda he set up a pen pal link for us. We were pleased when our first pictures arrived so we could see what the school looked like. The school is much larger than ours and has more than 1000 pupils.

We donated more than £100 to GAFI and we also joined in with ‘Go Orange for Orangutans’. From our colourful dressing up day, we were able to visit Chester Zoo and present a cheque for £100. We had a special tour of the orangutans and treated ourselves to lunch at the zoo.

We wrote to the children in our partner school in Uganda and told them about our work to support Chester Zoo and how pleased we were to be twinned with their school. We loved receiving pictures of the children opening the letters we sent.

In March 2014 we started to collect spoons to help Uri Geller create his Spoon Gorilla and were featured in the Chester Chronicle for our good work. Children in lots of countries were doing the same thing because 40000 spoons were needed. Ms Finch was delighted to receive a VIP ticket to the unveiling of the statue in the presence of HRH Prince Michael of Kent and Uri Geller! The special guests arrived by helicopter whilst the statue was under wraps.

Since then we have sent our twin school, more letters, Christmas cards, books, a plaque to celebrate our twinning, footballs and donations of money to assist with tree planting and crop planting. Here’s what was said about our twin school after a 2018 visit:

“Your twin school was literally amazing- you have to go and visit! You could see all the trees they have planted from your school and we planted two more to mark the visit. They were all waiting for three hours to meet me (on a Sunday) as Denis was delayed and then sang their hearts out! We even had a marching band. Denis is working with the school and two other schools to develop a forest school area for them to use- so they are going to use your donation for that- I have attached a photo of the hillside they are building it on. I’m hoping your school would like to get involved in our next project- GAFI have joined forces with DRIP Uganda (https://drip.org.uk/), who build rainwater harvesting systems for families in crisis. We are intending to send over a DRIP team to build 60 rainwater harvesting systems in the schools and homes of the children who attend the GAFI schools.” (Nicky Bolton)

Good work is being done because we are working together to make a difference. This includes the fact that following receipt of the email above we invited families to come and dine with us to raise money towards the Drip Tanks (Dine for Drip) and we raised enough money to get 5 drip tanks built for families in December 2018.

You can view a video here sent to us in 2021 which clearly shows the positive impact we have had for the children and families of our twin school, Muganza School in Uganda.

In December 2021 we raised enough money for an additional 2 drip tanks for families and although work on these was delayed by Covid restrictions we received photos showing the work had started in September 2022.

There is still more to do and that is why we are proud to continue our link. Our current goal is to continue to raise money which we can send towards planting more trees and installing more drip tanks.

We believe that some of the benefits of developing international links are:

• raising awareness of the world around us so that our children become global citizens of the future
• celebrating differences and similarities
• broadening and enriching the curriculum

Read about gorillas on WWF website
Visit the Wildlife Conservation Society website
Denis Agaba’s First Visit to Westminster
Find our more about GAFI (Great Apes Film Initiative)
Find out more about the Drip project