Lawn Manor Academy gets crafty for charity

Lawn Manor Academy pupils have been busy creating a range of hand-made keyrings to raise money for the DEC Ukraine and Turkey-Syria appeals.

The group of four Year Nine pupils, Hayden, Ellie, Melissa and Helena have raised almost £40 selling keyrings made using Hama beads to fellow pupils. 

The four are part of the Connect9+ class, which provides a supportive and nurturing learning environment to pupils with additional needs in order to ensure they leave school achieving the highest academic qualifications that they’re capable of, as well as supporting the development of their social and life skills.

The group approached the project in a business-like way in order to make the most money possible for charity.  They started by conducting market research across the school to measure the demand for keyrings, what sort of designs people wanted and what they would be willing to pay.

From this, they worked on their costings and designs, finally making each keyring by hand and selling to fellow pupils for £1 per keyring.

Connect9+ Teacher, Kelda Sproston, said: “The class has worked really hard to raise money for the DEC appeals and we’re really proud of the money they’ve raised for charity.  

“The project has helped them develop their social and communication skills as well as supporting their class learning too.   It has also been very useful for them to understand that products aren’t just made, but the business-like process of working out what people want and making items that will sell.

“The most popular designs were football teams, Disney characters and animals.  They were really well received by the other pupils in the school and having the four pupils make and sell them themselves also really helped the class become more visible to the rest of the school outside of the usual Connect classes area.”

Lawn Manor Academy is part of the Ascend Learning Trust, for more information visit www.lawnmanor.org