St Paul’s pupils hit the heights

Pupils, parents and staff at a Paisley primary school have been busy climbing hills including Munros and dancing in an amazing fundraising effort.

St Paul’s is looking to win the Cash For Kids School Challenge for the second time in a row and look well on course to retain their crown.

The Foxbar school is up against a host of others from the west of Scotland – and determined organisers have set the bar high with a range of fun activities and challenges.

The children have had crazy hair days, socially- distanced dance- athons and some pupils have taken on their very own personal challenges.

Yvonne Moohan, from the school’s parent council, is one of the organisers and she is urging Express readers to get behind them.

She said: “This year, with lockdown and social distancing, our work has been cut out.

“However, we haven’t been phased by the challenge and the St Paul’s community haven’t let us down. The support has again been phenomenal.

“Staff and parents have had to adapt as much as possible to communicate online in order to set up our fundraising events – who doesn’t love a Zoom call?

“We have been receiving donations mostly online and our large gatherings for fundraising have had to be altered to maintain social distancing guidelines, yet we have still managed to build a good, strong team spirit.

“All the children have been absolutely fantastic, despite all of the changes they’ve encountered, even just to return to school let alone our new set-ups for fundraising.”

Yvonne continued: “We’ve held crazy hair days and dance-a-thons, and each class remained in their own ‘bubble’ to adhere to distancing rules.

“A few children throughout the school have also set themselves their own personal challenges.

“We had our lovely P6 pupil Natalia cycle 50km to Lomond Shores and back, P7 pupil Caragh climb Ben Lomond despite living with the condition hip dysplasia, and she was joined by P4 pupil Freya, who last year did a sponsored hair cut that the Little Princess Trust benefited from.

“Inspired by his fellow pupils, P4 pupil Jamie will be taking on Ben Lomond on Saturday to contribute towards such a worthy cause.

“We also have P4 pupil Cara doing a sponsored haircut and, again, The Little Princess Trust will benefit, and Daniel in P4 will walk around Durrockstock Park dressed as a dinosaur.

“Not to be forgotten, our school mascot Eddie the Teddy has had a couple of outings to cheer our pupils on, which makes a change from all of the dancing in supermarket foyers last year.”

The teaching staff are also pulling their weight with sponsored walks and a quiz night.

Yvonne said: “We have a few other things in the pipeline too.

“But, with it being a competition, we don’t want to be giving too much away to our competitors.

“We have to send a massive thanks to the wider community again this year.

“We know that businesses have been hit hard in recent months, however, they haven’t let us down.

“We will be holding a raffle for all of the wonderful donations that we’ve received.”

 The challenge ends on Friday, October 23. You can donate at https:// bit.ly/31a1pus