Students' literary exploration (From Northwich Guardian)

Grange students help Gambian school with elephant book

8:30am Thursday 14th February 2013 in News

ENTERPRISING students have written and illustrated a children’s book about a Gambian elephant’s adventures on holiday in London.

The book, An Elephant in London, has been produced by a team of sixth form students from The Grange School, in Hartford, with proceeds going to the school’s charity Project Gambia.

It is also part of a book twinning scheme, which means that for every copy sold in this country, another will be given to a child in the Gambia.

Sixth formers Laura Bielinski, Becky Hall and Christian Tighe produced the book as part of their Young Enterprise project to set up and run their own business for a year.

They chose to set up a social enterprise so that all proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the charity.

“We are all going to the Gambia over Easter so we are looking forward to giving copies of the book to children; hopefully they will like it,” Christian said.

Laura Bielinski, who illustrated the tale, said: “We chose to do the Elephant in London because we wanted to do something that was instantly recognisable as both British and quintessentially Gambian.”

The Grange School has been supporting the development of education in Brikama, in the Gambia, for nearly 15 years.

A group of Grange students that went to the Gambia last year made more than 900 bricks to build walls for a classroom block that was devastated by monsoon-type rains annually.

The main job for this year’s group is to paint this classroom block and distribute resources.

Local businesses and individuals have donated almost £6,000 in support of this year’s project, which will allow the school to engage local Gambian craftsmen to make enough desks to kit out 11 classrooms.

• For more information about the Elephant in London visit blueboxenterprises.eu or email blueboxenterprises@yahoo.com.