Courageous Advocacy at Christ Church

A courageous advocate is someone who champions a cause which is special and meaningful to them. At Christ Church Church of England Primary School we have a strong emphasis on encouraging our pupils to become courageous advocates, not just locally, but nationally and globally. 

At some point in life we will all face challenges and need support to help us overcome these barriers. We teach our children that it is important to help others when we can no matter who they are, where they come from or what challenges they may face. We teach this through the teachings of the bible and learning about other courageous advocates.  

Our Christian values along with carefully planned opportunities in our curriculum ensure that the children regularly discuss and debate the big issues, to challenge injustice and to engage in activities that can bring about change are always present. 

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Proverbs 31:8-9 

It is important for our children to appreciate their role as part of a community; to take responsibility, to be able to look after themselves & to foster an understanding of their importance, impact and influence in the world. As part of this we are working towards our Global Neighbours accreditation.  

We support a range of charities in our local area, nationally and globally. The school council work with staff, governors, parents, pupils and Christ Church to identify worthy causes to support.

In recent years we have carried out a range of different fundraising to support many good causes, some of which include:

• Our local food bank (The Trussell Trust)
• Sports Relief
• Comic Relief
• Children in Need
• NSPCC
• Macmillan
• The Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal

This year, we decided to dress up our school mascot "CC" the monkey in spots to donate our money to Children in Need. Pupils voted in class for 15 minutes of fun as well as dressing up in our Pudsey clothes or adding spots to our uniform. 

On Tuesday 6th June, pupils took part in "The Big Squat" Fundraiser to  twin our toilets with another school block in another part of the world. 

Worship Team led a service to explain how Toilets Save Lives! Also, as part of our Prayer Space, pupils had the opportunity to find out more about Toilet Twinning and how we can make a small difference to others. In the end, we raised £1518.58 and twinned four toilets in four different countries as well as donating money to the WASH Project. Fantastic! 

Thank you to some members of our Y6 Worship Team who led our Service on “Carers of Creativity” giving us an opportunity to reflect on how we care for our planet. They talked about how the earth was given to us as a present from God and how people have harmed the earth since. We looked at newspaper headlines and reflected on how we can make a difference to our world by each doing small things. We promoted the litter pick on the Honeybourne Line last weekend too so hopefully some of you were able to attend!

Children wore red for Red Nose Day and brought coins in to put onto Mr Nosey! We had a competition in classes to design or make something that would make you smile. We raised a total of £145.80! 

Noah decided himself that it would be kind to grow and cut his hair to donate to The Little Princess Trust who use hair to make wigs for children with cancer. He raised over £400 before Gift Aid which made it over £600! Well done Noah! He has inspired a classmate to do the same thing. 

Defne in Year 4 has family living in Turkey so when the devastating earthquake happened, she approached our School Council with the idea to do something and take action. It was decided that pupils could wear their own clothes and bring their teddies into school for donations to the DEC charity. 

Daren is a former Mountaineer and Army Reservist who was paralysed in a near death climbing accident at the age of 26. Since then, Darren has become an active para-adventurer and expedition leader who has become a passionate champion of the phrase “strength through adversity”. Adventure has been at the heart of Darren’s recovery. Since sustaining his life-changing injury and becoming paralysed from the chest down, Darren has focussed his recovery by taking on new and ambitious challenges – whether that be learning to freedive to depths of over 30ft on one breath, or in becoming the first disabled person to kayak from Land’s End to John O’ Groats – a distance of over 1,400 kilometres across some of Europe’s most challenging coastal waters. In 2023, Darren has the first disabled person to complete the iconic World Marathon Challenge (seven marathons, seven continents, seven days). Pupils heard all about his perseverance and how he uses challenges to raise money for key charities across the UK for example he joined the BRIT Ambassador family and is championing the BRIT Challenge to support and improve young adult mental health and fitness throughout the UK.

When pupils heard about the war in Ukraine, they wanted to update our prayer space to reflect this current news. We grew sunflowers and used yellow and blue ribbons to add our prayers to a special tree. 

Pupils enjoyed a fun day celebrating Children in Need wearing spots and stripes giving donations in coins to outline the giant picture of Pudsey Bear! 

On 4th February, we had a fun day celebrating Number Day with fun activities in class but also School Council voted to have a number-themed cake sale to raise money for this brilliant charity. 

Year 5 decided to lead a class service on Remembrance for pupils and parents. The Worship Team updated the prayer space and we collected donations for the Poppy Appeal. 

On 5th November 2021, pupils in Year 5 had the opportunity to meet our local MP, Alex Chalk to hear about Climate Change plans in the UK and our local area. They also were able to ask questions personal to us and our school. 

Our School Council invited our local PCSO to talk to them about how we can work together to serve our local community. 

Thank you for donations to our local food bank The Trussell Trust in Cheltenham. Pupils donated food items and our worship team wrote prayers for the service. 

On 15th July 2021, pupils ran a Race for Life long distance race to raise money for Cancer Research. Our final donation to the charity reached over £10,000 which was an incredible achievement for a small school.