'Together We Can'...Help children escape poverty

The 5^th Potters Bar Brownies have been very busy raising awareness of the Eight Millennium Development Goals through a resource called ‘Together We Can’.

The Brownies decided to support a charity called ‘Mary’s Meals’ with their backpack appeal, which helps children from poor families to get to school in countries like Liberia and Malawi. Very often these families cannot afford to buy basic things like pencils and notebooks, or even suitable clothes to wear to school, and so children miss out on an education. Along with the free school meal that Mary’s Meals provides (costing as little as £6.15 per child, per year) the backpacks that we send, help children to get an education that will help them escape poverty in later life.

We asked all the other uniformed organisations, Scouts, Cubs, Beavers, Girlguiding UK and the members of King Charles the Martyr Church to help us with this project by donating items such as: backpacks, spoons, notebooks, pencils, pens, pencil cases, towels, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, clothing and flip flops.

 All of the donated items were brought to our church parade on the 25^th March and it was a great success!

We also held a cake and table top sale to raise money for the charity, with all proceeds going towards buying additional items for the backpacks. The donations being put together, compiled 50 full backpacks and we also had a box of spare items. With the money we raised from the cake and table top sale we bought additional items to complete the backpacks and still had £50 to donate to Mary’s Meal. The backpacks which we donated are on their way to Malawi to children in school’s out there who have very little.

We would like to thank everyone who donated items, as it was a whole community effort and a fantastic result for such a worthwhile project. The backpacks and money will make a real difference to children’s lives.