Avenue Primary School: 90kg Rice Challenge Heroes!

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Back in June 2015, Malawian rice farmer Howard Chiko Msukwa visited Avenue Primary School in Leicester. The staff and Y5 pupils that met Howard were so inspired that they decided to hold a 90kg Rice Challenge Week just after half term. This week we receive this brilliant report from two of the pupils who took part, Dina and Gurjeet:

Last week the Y5/6 children were trying to raise money for Howard, who is the rice farmer from Malawi that visited our school. Our target was £500. For the sale we made rice snakes and hearts, rainmakers/shakers and rice/spice packs with recipes.

On Thursday we cooked curry, salsa and 160 chapatis for the whole school lunch!! Councillor Clarke, Lee Jowett (from Leicester City Council) and Louise Davis (from Just Fair Trade) came to our school for lunch. We showed them round our school to look at our solar panels, plastic bottle greenhouse, wildlife garden and our Eco Schools Green Flag flying in the playground. We all had a great day.

The whole week was really fun and we made £820 out of 90kg of rice!! This money will pay to educated a child for a year and go towards a rotavator to help Howard on his rice farm.

We loved the challenge.

Dina and Gurjeet – Year 6 Avenue Primary School, Leicester.

Having been inspired by Howard, this amazing group of children have now inspired us, and we’d love to help them buy a rotavator for Howard and his farmers’ association. Rotavators cost around £2200 so while Avenue have made a huge dent in that total we’d love to help them creep just that bit closer to their target. But for that we need your help!

On Friday 27 November we’re holding a White Friday event at Just Fair Trade and the whole £5 cost of tickets will go to the rotavator fund. It’ll be a great opportunity to come along and consider how your purchasing power – particularly at this time of year – can impact farmers like Howard.

But we’d also like to see more schools, faith groups and community organisations taking on the 90kg Rice Challenge themselves! Follow these links to find out more about the 90kg Rice Challenge itself, the reality of doing the challenge in a church community or to explore more posts about the challenge. Then get in touch to take the next step!

1 thought on “Avenue Primary School: 90kg Rice Challenge Heroes!

  1. A fantastic achievement Avenue Primary and I loved the ideas you used to help sell the rice in different ways. I will pass this along to Howard via email. He doesn’t get internet very often but if he reply’s I will forward the email over to Avenue Primary. Thanks for all your great hard work and dedication from all the team at JTS

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