Schoollife
amnesty ambassadors Anuriti and Smriti Aojula are to be congratulated on being the first Bablake pupils to be selected as Amnesty Ambassadors. here, the twin sisters tell of their experience so far. Amnesty International is a global organisation that campaigns to promote and develop human rights across the world. Its objective is to protect people where fairness and justice are denied. Amnesty has over three million members in 150 countries collectively working to achieve this goal. We have been members of Bablake’s Amnesty International group for over three years and have campaigned for various cases including the abolition of the death penalty, Engin Çeber’s message of hope campaign and the cruelty in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe regime.
In October last year, Mrs. Jackson encouraged us to apply for the Amnesty International Youth Advisory Group. Each year, 25 youth members are selected from across the UK in what is an extremely competitive application process. We knew that this experience would be a great opportunity for our personal involvement with Amnesty to be taken to the next level and it will enable Bablake to form a stronger link with the London headquarters. Our applications proved successful and we were delighted to be the first Bablake pupils to be selected as Amnesty Ambassadors.
‘We have been members of Bablake’s Amnesty International group for over three years...’
So far this year, we have attended two meetings at the headquarters. They have been focused on how Amnesty can encourage more youths to join the organisation, on campaigning and visual media, on Amnesty’s strategic direction for the next five years and on the importance of citizenship and why we feel it should remain as part of the national curriculum. We have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the group at Bablake and we will definitely continue being active members of Amnesty when we enter university.
raise the bunting With limited funding, teams had to fight Dragon Den style for the much coveted opportunity to represent Bablake in the national Young enterprise Scheme. the lower Sixth is a year full of budding entrepreneurs and ideas ranged from Christmas cards and framed artwork through to children’s cookbooks. the winning team – ‘the Bunting Company’ – makes high quality material bunting tailored for different occasions, and is already generating considerable income and profit. other teams, despite not winning a place on the scheme, have not been deterred and were well represented at the Christmas fayre, making money from their ventures. the Bunting Company will represent the school in trade fairs against other Coventry and
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the lion Spring 2011
Warwickshire schools, where they hope to build on ‘royal wedding fever’ with their latest bunting range in red, white and blue. Another team present at the Christmas fayre was ‘Blu Badger’ with its Children’s Culture Cookbook. here the team give an account of their experiences. ‘After much help and support from teachers, parents, and the school’s reprographics department, we had a successful run at the Christmas fayre. We used samples of food from our recipe book, cooked by members of the team, to entice people to our table. We also encouraged donations to Save the Children as we had decided
it was appropriate for a portion of our profits to go to that charity. After a continued effort up until Christmas, we managed to earn just over £300.’ A grand total of £128 was donated to Save the Children’s ‘no Child Born to Die’ campaign. this pays for a health worker to be fully trained and operate in poor or rural areas to give much needed and life-saving medical care.