How did this happen?

On Monday this week, over 1,000 Bolton School children came to school in the colours of the Malawi flag, black, red and green!

It was a wonderful sight for my eyes, watching the children getting out of their parents’ cars, stepping off the bus and walking into school draped in Malawi colours.

My eyes welled up at what we have been able to achieve.

Just over a year ago, I spotted a display wall in the school highlighting some fundraising for Malawi. I was so excited, and I tried to find out the teacher responsible. Year 5 teacher Mrs Julia Marsden had visited Malawi previously and was determined to build a high school. Together, we visited Malawi last October, so I could share our project Great Minds Bright Futures and meet the people who had inspired her to build a school. We discussed many ideas on how to bring this project to life to support orphaned children in Malawi.

Fast forward a few months and we are sat with the Head of Foundation at Bolton School, Philip Britton discussing how Great Minds Bright Futures could realise the dream of building a school.

By this point, Bolton School had raised over £22,000 towards this project and with this weeks’ fundraiser and another next week, we hope to have much, much, more. This is due to the generosity of the parents, carers and friends of the Bolton School children, and the efforts of the children.

Some of them, including my own daughter taking part in a walk around the playgrounds and for the high school children, a walk of almost 11 miles to Rivington Pike and back. A place I have walked up many times with my dad and my own children.

On my daughters’ fundraiser, the kids all in black, red and green looked amazing as they did stretches ahead of their walk. I am sure the high school kids will have as much excitement warming up for their event.

Why am I writing about this?

It just goes to show with a little bit of effort, big things can be achieved. Fate brought Mrs Marsden and myself together and now we are working on our plan to make the high school in Malawi orphaned children a reality.

If you have any ideas to help us with our fundraising, please get in touch.

Thanks for reading.

Dave Armstrong

Founder Great Minds Bright Futures