African Caribbean
Fishpool News - Another Busy Year for the Fishpool Project!
Another busy year for the Fishpool Project! Once again, the annual awards ceremony was overflowing with guests, participants and community support. The year has been filled with a variety of activities in each of the Fishpool schools. They have engaged in Learning Mentoring, study skills, individual support, group sessions, planning, organising, hosting events and arranging excursions.
There has also been a strong link with the work of the Black Forum and we have been delighted to have provided whole school training to both Brockworth and Churchdown schools through our black facilitators. We have also enjoyed hosting guest speakers: Rosemary Campbell from the DfES talking about Parent, School and Community responsibilities and later, Melvyn Davies from The Boys2Men Project who spoke about the needs of young boys to have a father figure and an awareness of responsibilities.
Our next joint venture will be at Beaufort Community School where we hope to hold an event linking and supporting a school in St Ann's, Jamaica. Mr Carlton Green has been instrumental in this work and we are delighted to promote and pursue his work.
The Awards event at the Guild Hall gave an insight into the work of Fishpool, the on-going work in school towards raising attainment of our Black pupils and the new initiative through our Learning Mentoring now based in all the Fishpool schools. We were also able to enjoy the individual performances of each school. It was with great pleasure that we welcomed Mr Bernard Westcarr who donated his recent autobiography "A Peasant in Jamaica" to each of the Fishpool schools. Awards were presented to individual achievers and all Fishpool participants received a certificate of merit. With regard to nourishment, Anita Anson and her helpers once again did us proud and we are grateful for her time, energy and prowess!
At this ceremony we were also able to distribute the BEAT newsletter and are thankful to Stroud and Swindon Building Society for agreeing to print all the copies for us. We are also grateful to The Gloucester Foundation Charity for their financial support towards the evening's events.
This year I am proud to report that Fishpool received a variety of Awards. These included: The Common Purpose Deutsche Bank Certificates of Merit, The NUT/UWT 'Arts and Minds' Certificates of Merit, The National Mentoring and Providers accreditation - and - we are awaiting news from The Chief Constables Awards and the EMAGIN nominations. Well done to you all! We also welcome two new Facilitators to The ACA/REF Parent Training Programme. We are now hoping to join together and deliver this excellent training programme in schools as well as other agencies.
Fishpool continues to grow and outcomes are being seen in the GCSE results. It is important for us all to take an active part in promoting achievement. As said at the ceremony: parents, the community, teachers and their schools WANT our young people to enjoy and achieve BUT we can only do so much. The real commitment must come from the pupils themselves. Learning can be fun but to achieve success entails hard work.
 
We believe in the students but our students must believe in themselves!
Dee Russell-Thomas
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