Anne Frank Award

At Bridge of Don Academy, we have encouraged our pupils, teachers and parents to take part in a number of different events during the past year to promote racial awareness and integration, promote equal opportunities, celebrate diversity and develop an understanding of and respect for others who are less fortunate than ourselves.

The work for this was gathered from various areas of the curriculum and presented in a folio to Grampian Racial Equality Council. This culminated in Bridge of Don academy being awarded the Anne Frank Award. Information on all the topics included in the folio can be found on the following pages.

To celebrate this fact a calendar of the pupils work was produced which hopefully will allow us to continue to raise money for charity for the Send A cow Foundation continuing our Art Africa theme which began in June 2004.

Art Africa

This event took place in June 2004 to raise money for the famine in Africa. It began by all our pupils and staff at our Easter assemblies watching Michael Buerk’s video footage of his return visit to Africa, twenty years after he first visited the country in 1984. Our pupil’s were so moved that even though we had already collected money for the famine by allowing pupils to pay to have a non-uniform day, an extra £150 was collected at the services. This was just the first step.

The next step was to raise further money by compiling artwork from past and present pupils and teachers to be auctioned. About sixty pieces of artwork, ranging from batiks, pen and ink drawings and paintings were sold at an auction open to members of the public on 2 ^nd June. 2004.

In September, all our pupils also took part in a sponsored walk along the beach from Bridge of Don to Balmedie. Pupils agreed that some of the money raised from sponsorship should also go towards ‘Art Africa’.

In total, £3250 was raised. This was enough money to buy two cows to support poor farmers in Africa.

East Meets West

This event took place last June during our Activities Week 2004. It lasted three days and included about fifteen first and second year pupils. The main aims of this event were to raise awareness and celebrate the cultural diversity of our local school and community. Through a variety of activities, pupils learned about the traditions and cultures of different countries such as India and China. This included wearing traditional dresses such as saris, cooking foods from different countries and henna tattooing.

Christmas Time

Last Christmas, we wanted to raise awareness of the different cultures and beliefs that are found within our school population. At the Christmas services for all our pupils and staff, following Reverend Kindsey’s Christmas message, some of our teachers and pupils spoke to the audience to explain what ‘Christmas’ meant to them. This included pupils from different countries such as Brazil, Iran and Romania, and teachers of Jewish and Muslim faiths. We also had pictures and a video from a former Physics teacher who sent a Christmas message all the way from Kyrgyzstan to let us all see what this time of year mean to him and the children in his school. A Christmas concert for pupils, parents, teachers and any other members of the public was held in the evening and included songs such as "Heal the World" to bring a global dimension and the evening.

(In our Student and Teacher planners, we have included the dates of religious festivals and celebrations of different faiths to highlight to teachers and pupils the importance of particular days for our Jewish, Muslim and Chinese pupils and teachers.)

Global Integration Project

About seventy pupils in second year have just completed a theme in Art and Design to promote racial and cultural integration. The paintings produced will be turned in to posters that will be displayed around the school. One of the paintings is going to be used as a cover for all our Student Planners, which every pupil will receive in August this year. The messages written and illustrated on the paintings include the following:

• ‘Tying the world together’

• ‘Everyone Connected’

• ‘We belong to the same world’

• ‘Many cultures, one world’

On the same theme, one of our fourth year pupils won the Grampian heat of the Sister Cities International (SCI) competition aimed at developing links promoting integration of different urban communities and cultures. Her painting has gone forward to the final, which will be judged at the SCI Annual Conference in Washington State in July.

Fair Trade Chocolate

Last year we introduced fair trade chocolate into our dining hall vending machines and our staff tuck shop. At assemblies, all pupils and staff watched a presentation about fair trade to raise awareness of the trading inequalities that exist within the world and the effects of globalisation on human societies.

We also promote fair trade at our Motivation Awards Ceremonies at Christmas and Easter where pupils receive a bronze silver or gold award for good behaviour and a fair trade sweet or chocolate E aster egg.

Although trading inequalities have always been part of the Standard Grade Geography curriculum for S3 and S4 pupils, we have now integrated fair trade into the Modern Studies curriculum for S1 and S2 pupils. They have just finished working on a Fair Trade Chocolate unit and produced storyboards advertising Dubble chocolate, a fair trade product.