Our Young Ambassadors organised and ran a Christmas Fayre. We held it in the games hall at lunchtime
and had various stalls/activities set up like limbo, a basketball challenge, and a skipping challenge.
The main focus, however, was our silent auction with the slogan ‘If you’re not minted, come to TGS Vinted’. The Young Ambassadors visited all registration classes and invited pupils to donate unwanted sports kit (leggings, tops, t-shirts, trainers etc) as well as unwanted formal wear (dresses, heels, shirts, suits etc).
The idea behind the auction was to give pupils the opportunity to clear out their formal wear and also give them the opportunity to buy a suitable outfit for upcoming school dances. This also fits in very well with our school's ethos of recycling and sustainability. They were amazed by the amount of donations we received.
The girls put numbers on all the items and hung them on a mobile rail and pupils attending the fayre were issued with a slip on which they could put their name and class. They could then record an item number and place a bid for that item. The YA chose a silent auction so that there was a degree of anonymity and nobody would feel awkward or self-conscious placing a bid. Pupils were able to browse the clothes rail and make their bids and then participate in the challenges/stalls.
Once the fayre closed, the Young Ambassadors went through all the bid slips and worked out who was the highest bidder on each item. That person was then contacted, and they paid and received the item. The event was a huge success with pupils really enjoying bidding for items and being able to purchase new kit at affordable prices. Many of the dresses were also sold. All unsold formal items were donated to the Huntly Rural Action Group – a local charity which will sell the items in the local charity shop and the unsold sports kit was donated to Kits 4 All.
The event was a huge success, and we hope next year’s YAs will want to replicate it so it can become an annual event on our calendar.
The Kit 4 All scheme was also highlighted by the Young Ambassadors and they gave a presentation at assembly about the scheme, where the collection bins are in school and how pupils can access donated equipment. This was done to raise awareness of this great opportunity as the YAs felt it wasn’t very well known about and those that could really benefit from it weren’t aware of it.
Since then, we identified that our S2 cohort wasn’t very active within our extracurricular clubs. With help from Miss Ironside (PE probation teacher), the YAs carried out a survey of all our S2 pupils to find out why they didn’t participate and to find out what activities they would like to see available. As a direct result of this, we now have a lunchtime dodgeball club for these non-participating S2 pupils and we have an average of 15 S2 pupils attending this on a regular basis.