By Miss Dawson, CAS & Service Co-ordinator
The First Give final for our Lower Sixth students took place last night (Thursday 24th March).
The eight teams selected to go through to the final to compete for the £1500 grant money on offer were the King’s Arms Project, Access Bedford, Bedford Women’s Centre, Tibbs Dementia Foundation, Autism Bedfordshire, Faces, HULA and St John’s Hospice at Moggerhanger.
The judging panel was made up of Mike Bonney, a Mencap Bedford Trustee, Ben Banks, a non-executive director of local mental health charity CHUMS, Lucy Bardner (Director of Community Programmes for the Harpur Trust), Miss Mackenzie and Amber Joe (BGS Service Captain).
Each year the presentations continue to be of an exceptionally high quality, with the students showing excellent delivery and innovative ways of showing the work of their charity. After much discussion and deliberation, the judges awarded the £1000 grant money to Alice Fisher, Isabel Jones, Imogen Marchant, Annie Marks and Hania Raza Rizvi and their chosen charity of Autism Bedfordshire. The teams representing Access Bedford and St John’s Hospice were each awarded £250 for their charities.
Gill Christmas, Funding Manager at Autism Bedfordshire, said: "We are absolutely over the moon to have won the Bedford Girls School First Give Programme.
“We are so incredibly grateful to Alice, Isabel, Imogen, Annie and Hania for choosing Autism Bedfordshire as their charity and for their passion, dedication and hard work in promoting the work that we do.
“The £1,000 grant comes at a crucial time for us as we are trying to pull in all the funds we can to cover our costs for the year and enable us to continue to provide vital support for people with autism and their families in the local community.”
The whole programme has been a fantastic opportunity for our Lower Sixth students to interact with charities in our local community, and despite not winning, several of the groups have been inspired to continue to raise awareness and, hopefully, some money for their charities, with potential long lasting relationships having begun because of their First Give experience.
