Over the past week Cowbridge Comprehensive School has enjoyed the privilege of welcoming Miss Ingrid Lestrade. Miss Lestrade is a director of a South African charity called the Goedgedacht Trust which the school has been supporting for the past four years through fund raising and highlighting awareness in the local community.

This is Miss Lestrade’s third visit to the school and she was excited to see the progress made on the new building. Mr Griffiths in charge of fundraising for the trust explained the purpose of Miss Lestrade’s visit was to ‘help raise awareness of the charity within the school through a series of assemblies and workshops’. To this end, Miss Lestrade held assemblies with years 7, 8, 11 and 12 as well as running workshops with students from both lower and middle schools. During the workshops Miss Lestrade outlined the work of the trust as well as getting students from year 9 to write letters to the students in South Africa to encourage them to stay in school, a major goal of the trust. Miss Lestrade also taught the students of Cowbridge some of the songs that the students sing on the farm in South Africa.

During her time at Cowbridge, Miss Lestrade was also the guest of honour at a reunion of the students who attended the visit to South Africa in the summer of 2009. The reunion which was originally scheduled for Tuesday but was cancelled due to the snow was rearranged for Monday lunchtime. Both current and past students attended as well as the Head Teacher Mrs Margaret Evans. The highlight of the reunion was a film put together by Mr Nathan Hopkins a PE teacher and budding film director at Cowbridge chronicling the events of the summer through both photographs and video taken by the students.

The visit of Miss Lestrade was made possible through sponsorship by the school and a UK tour company. Mr Griffiths would like to thank the pupils of Cowbridge Comprehensive and Edwin Doran Travel for for helping to sponsor Miss Lestrade’s visit. The school would also like to thank the local community, the Rotary Club and the English Speaking Union for their generous support.

To find out more about the charity please visit www.pathoutofpoverty.org/ the UK branch of the Goedgedacht Trust.