September 2, 2020
As children and young people prepare to go back to school, Sinead Callaghan, CAFOD’s Young Leadership Coordinator, and Susan Kambalu, CAFOD’s Secondary Inset Coordinator, take a moment to reflect on what the coronavirus pandemic has taught us about education and what we can look forward to this year.
Continue reading “Learning in lockdown”August 27, 2020
Over the years she has worked at CAFOD, Harriet Paterson has written everything from our factsheets to our prayer tweets. Here she gives us a mum’s eye view of lockdown and distance learning with a Year 6 boy.
Continue reading “Back to school? Yes please!”December 5, 2019
As we get swept up in all the manic preparations this festive season, it is important to remember the true meaning of Advent and Christmas. Sinead Callaghan, Young Leadership Coordinator at CAFOD, believes it is an opportunity to spread love and give to those in need. Continue reading “World Gifts: give the gift of love”
September 6, 2019
Monica Conmee works in our Education team. With many children and young people going back to school this week, she explains why education is such an important part of CAFOD’s work.
Continue reading “Back to school: Our work with children and young people”
September 3, 2019
Susan Kambalu is Secondary Inset Coordinator at CAFOD. Here she shares how her experience of working with young people has helped her develop new courses as part of the Connecting Classrooms Through Global Learning programme, supported by the British Council.
Continue reading “Putting faith into action in schools”August 29, 2019
School students worldwide have been raising their voices to demand that the climate emergency is addressed with urgency. As Swedish schoolgirl campaigner Greta Thunberg famously said: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
At CAFOD, we are privileged to encounter children and young people acting on this issue both in poor communities overseas and in England and Wales.
Continue reading “Young people lead the way on tackling the climate emergency”February 15, 2018
Gillie Drinkall is a CAFOD school volunteer who has been visiting schools in South London to talk about Zimbabwe, and to introduce the Lent Give it up challenge.
A primary school in South London. A very small boy approached me and apologised for not being at my previous assembly as he was in hospital. He then confided, with breathless excitement, “It’s my birthday in six days’ time!”. I wished him “Happy Birthday … in six days’ time” and turned to a slightly older boy who wanted to know how to give money to CAFOD as soon as possible. I was reminded how much I enjoy talking to small children.
I have scheduled visits to an unusually high number of schools this Lent to share stories from Zimbabwe and to talk about the Give it up challenge. As ever, until the first assembly unfolds, I am never quite sure how the children will respond. This time I was going to try and show all the schools the short film featuring Svondo and his mother Marian who live in Zimbabwe.
September 28, 2017
Margaret Hodgson is a CAFOD school visitor and has been inspiring children to Brighten Up for Harvest Fast Day.
Are you planning to get involved with CAFOD’s Brighten Up event next week? St. Bede’s school in Darlington wanted to learn more about CAFOD’s work in El Salvador and invited me in to help them plan a Brighten Up fundraiser. It was the first time they had invited CAFOD into their school and so I was more than delighted to visit!
Book a CAFOD visitor for your school
Continue reading “Brighten Up: Buzzing with fundraising ideas”
June 29, 2017
Jo Walker is a teacher at St Anthony’s primary school, and this term her pupils have been learning about renewable energy and writing messages as part of the Power to be campaign.
Solar energy allows children like Veronica to have a good education so they do well at school and to do well in the future. Please help all children to have the power to be the best person they want to be. Solar power is healthy for the earth and can help fulfill dreams – St Anthony’s pupil
We introduced CAFOD’s Power to be campaign with our Year 5 children and it was a huge success! The children were engaged throughout and were really affected by the content. They found the story of Veronica so moving, learning how solar energy has transformed the life of her community, helping more children study, and being able to compare her daily life with their own provided them with a really powerful stimulus for the activities, and children wrote hopeful messages to Veronica.
Continue reading “Dear World Bank, build a brighter future for every child”
September 12, 2016
Lucy Collins is Head of RE at Carmel College. In this blog she reflects on welcoming CAFOD volunteers to run workshops at school, and the impact of CAFOD’s training with teachers.
‘We love these sessions as we get to think about how our faith has such an impact on the lives of others and the world we live in. It makes it real and makes us realise we can actually make a difference, even if it is just a small one for now.’
– Student at Carmel College.
This year we welcomed back CAFOD for what have now become our annual workshops with Years 9 and 10, and we we were delighted that CAFOD would so readily support us by returning to our college.
CAFOD worked with us to create exciting activities which complimented our new GCSE specification preparations alongside current curriculum requirements. It was amazing how they were able to provide materials which allowed our students to access Church documents and encyclicals so easily and joyfully!
