On Friday 27th September, a group of staff from Mill Green School (John, Pete, Kevin, Ally, Jodie and Vicki), are going to “Walk the Big One”. We will be walking up the Big One rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach to raise money to continue the foreign exchange programme with Gustav Werner Schule in Stuttgart, Germany. Initially we were granted funding from the Comenius project, but this was unfortunately cut, and we are no longer eligible for funding.

After a meeting between the two Headteachers, the programme was set up and Shirley Moulds was then tasked with organising it and applied for funding for both schools. Unfortunately, Shirley had to retire due to ill health and sadly passed away from Ovarian Cancer in October 2018.

The two schools (staff and students) have established a lifelong friendship that continues to thrive with each visit.

For the past 9 years, we have been participating in the exchange trips and they are very important and rewarding for both schools. We have found that our students benefit greatly from going over to Germany or being a part of hosting our friends from Germany at our school. They get to experience a different culture, make new friends and learn the German language when communicating with each other. We have also found that going over to Stuttgart is the first time abroad for some of our students, which is a huge experience. Our students always seem to overcome barriers that would scare most of us off and always do it with a smile on their faces. We are all very proud to be staff working alongside them.

With all of this in mind, we wanted to set ourselves a difficult challenge. As most of the group are afraid of heights, we thought that climbing 235ft would take us right out of our comfort zone. Any donation would be greatly appreciated and will go a long way to helping us to continue to fund the exchange visits with our friends.

In Memory of Shirley Moulds to continue the project she was so passionate about.