Catrina Martin's story

We have baked many a sweet treat to sell at the local farmers market, providing refreshments to the traders and buyers, with the school choir coming along to sing, which provides a great opportunity to be part of the community.  Previous pupils, whilst purchasing a cuppa and a cake, will tell us about their school days – more often than not the topic is school dinners!  Recently we organised an Easter family bingo, with over a 120 people in attendance - it was a most eggcellent event with lots of delicious prizes won!  The children, their families and friends are great supporters of the events.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of hard work that goes on in preparation for the events -  planning, advertising, purchasing supplies, hampers and sweetie cones to made up, etc – we all do what we can, working to our strengths and time available to pull it all together – and the reason we do all of this is for the children to have an amazing experience in their school years.  The funds raised have been used to purchase equipment for the infants playground to enrich their play, bus costs have been covered for school trips to keep the cost down for parents, plus extra experiences with special guests/organisations coming into school and most recently a lodge!

The volunteering leave offered by Cumberland Council has been a tremendous help in this as previously I would have had to take two half days of annual or flexi leave to support just the Christmas Fair and Bingo.  This additional support and flexibility from the Council is fantastic and really does align with our core values.

The icing on the cake? Seeing all that the children are gaining from the hard work and the benefit it brings to our community!