Zellweger UK – Chosen Charity for the Year
Borneo Orangutan – Adopted endangered animal
At Birchwood we believe that it is crucial that our children have a voice and a say in their school and how it is run. Our children are at the forefront of every decision we make in school and so who better to contribute and support those decisions, than our own wonderful children.
Last week our School Councillors and Vice Councillors met to vote on our charity for 2019/20. After discussing all the charities suggested by children and staff in school, we have decided that ‘Zellweger UK’ will be our chosen charity for the year.
Zellweger is a very rare genetic condition that only affects 1 in 50,000 babies born. It is so rare that most doctors have never heard of it and because of this, the charity receives hardly any funding to research and to look into treatments of this condition. Most children do not live into adulthood and have to deal with delays in their development which also include deafness, blindness and a lot of other health issues.
Zellweger UK is made up of a team of volunteers: parents, family and friends of affected children. All funds raised go directly to supporting both research in finding treatments and to support families affected by this devastating disorder. The school council have set themselves an ambitious target of raising £2000 and they are already busy thinking up exciting ways to raise funds towards this target. We are going to be working very closely with the Maw family in school who nominated this charity to us after losing their 16 month old cousin to this rare condition earlier this year.
I look forward to keeping you all up to date with the fundraising work of our school council and their progress towards reaching their target amount. The Council also received some very persuasive letters this week from Year 2 children asking them to consider choosing an orangutan as our endangered animal to sponsor this year. During their trip to Twycross Zoo, the children all fell in love with a baby orangutan who was playing ‘peek a boo’ with them. After some research, we discovered that there has been a 50% decline in orangutan numbers in the last 60 years and that 3000 orangutans are illegally killed every year.
We hope that our sponsorship will help to fund projects to monitor orangutans and create protected areas of rainforest for them. Please keep an eye on our School Council noticeboard for more information on Zellweger UK and our Orangutan adoption.
Mr N Coleman - Headteacher