Year 1 raise over £1,000 for Orangutans

Pupils in Year 1 at King Edward’s School, Bath organised a sponsored bike ride from Bath to Bristol earlier this month to raise money for The Orangutan Project and its partner, The Borneo Nature Foundation, after learning about the plight of orangutans in their lessons at school.

To date, their efforts have helped to raise over £1,000 for the charity!

‘Pedal for Orangutans’ was the brainchild of Wren, a pupil at KES, who was inspired to act after learning about the endangered habitat of orangutans in Borneo as part of a class topic on Our Wonderful World. In addition to organising the sponsored bike ride along the 13-mile Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Year 1 pupils also wrote to the leading supermarket chains asking them to stop using palm oil in their products.

On the day of the sponsored bike ride, the children and their families set off from Bath, waved off by their teacher, Mrs Rocksborough-Smith, who said: “I’m so proud of my class, who were determined to do something to help orangutans in Borneo after reading There’s a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom and learning how their rainforest homes are being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations."

The story that inspired their learning has a special local connection: it was written by author, James Sellick, a former pupil of King Edward’s School.