That may not sound like a very grandiose ambition, but hopefully the letter which follows explains why, for me, it’s huge.
“Mr P Sykes (Assistant Headteacher)
Dorton House School …
“31st March 2009
“Dear Mr Sykes
“Re: Fred’s Friends – Inspiring Children.
“I am an ex-pupil of Dorton House (1973/79). Thirty years on, I have had a career in law and am now the founder and director of a company providing multimedia business information.
“Fred’s Friends is a children’s charity which I am in the process of establishing. The tag line, “Inspiring Children”, is true on two levels:
Firstly, the aims are:
1 – to inspire children to discover and fulfill their potential through creative projects;
2 – to provide opportunities for apparently different groups of children to learn about each other from each other; and
Secondly, the children I had the privilege of working with on what became the pilot project last year truly inspired me. They brought “Fred Bear” (a little character I had invented twenty years earlier) to life and they rekindled my ambition to set up the charity – an idea which first occurred to me in 2002.
“At the root of the aims is my belief, born of experience, that the most disabling condition known to humankind has nothing to do with physical, mental, sensory or social limitations – it is in fact lack of self-confidence.
“Alongside my professional career, I have worked for many years with children of all abilities, in a range of voluntary roles – most recently, as a governor of Ghyllgrove Infant School, here in Basildon. Within our school community, we have particular literacy issues, especially among the boys – because reading and writing simply do not feature in their home lives. I have always been a keen reader and an aspiring author, so in 2007, I floated the idea of encouraging our Year2 children to work with me on the writing and illustration of a book. We decided to base the story around healthy eating, something to which the school is very committed. We planned the project over six weeks (Jan’ to March ’08), believing the children would get bored if we tried to carry on much longer. In the event, it ran for six months – and by the end, last July, the class was just as keen as they had been at the beginning. The book has just been published, using an online self-publishing service and we are now planning a party this July, at which my twenty-six co-authors & illustrators and I will officially launch it. The book was a real team effort – what thrilled our Headteacher and the Year2 class teacher was that even the most intractable non-writers picked up their pens and got involved.
“We also took a considerable amount of dvd footage, which we aim to turn into a film over the summer.
The Ghyllgrove project enabled me to realize several personal dreams – and it has revived another. In my last couple of years at Dorton House (before I moved on to Chorleywood), I enjoyed helping out with the infants (the beginning of my voluntary career?!). As an adult, I have thought many times of coming back at some point to work with the children, but the opportunity has not arisen – until now. I have the beginnings of an idea for another project, with your pupils of a similar age to the Ghyllgrove class, which I would very much like to discuss with you. Also, our Head is keen to explore the possibility of forging links between her school and yours – which ties in very closely with the charity’s second aim. I wonder whether we could arrange a meeting, at which I could show you the book (and maybe some of the film footage) and talk through a potential collaboration? If I may, I shall call you in a few days to see whether this might be possible. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me. Finally, there is more information about the Ghyllgrove project and the resulting charity – including Fred Bear’s biography – on my blog:
http://fredsfriends.wordpress.com.
“Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to speaking to you in the near future.
“Yours sincerely
Sherie L Griffiths LL.B”
Tags: children; school; education; "Dorton House"; "visual impairment"; "Fred Bear"
