Horrabridge Primary School held a mufti day last Wednesday, where pupils dressed in colours of fruits and vegtables and also donated these foods to the village food hub.
The day was part of a larger, six-week project - the ‘Healthy Habits - Activating Change, Through Food’ challenge - focusing on food education, community support and social action undertaken by five Year 5 girls, working with the Argyle Community Trust.
As part of the challenge, Bethany Bond, Daisia Wright, Georgia Brown, Bella Gibbings and Lucy Besgrove devised ‘Project Fruity’, where they asked their fellow pupils to come into school last Wednesday wearing fruit and vegetable colours. Alongside the mufti event, they asked everyone to bring in that fruit or vegetable as a donation to the village’s weekly food hub, run by the Love Your Neighbour church and Feeding Devon.
The school received considerable donations, which were collected by methodist pioneer Ali Mansfield and passed onto the food hub later that afternoon. At the food hub, these items were shared with the community either for free or a donation.
Headteacher John Clarke said: ‘I know the girls thoroughly enjoyed working with the ACT on such a worthwile project, which has been incredibly well received by the local community - it was all their own idea. I’m so proud of the thought and care they put into this and how well they did with other people in mind’.
Any food that was not collected on the day was made into soups and crumbles and delivered to those in need within the local community, particularly the elderly or those who cannot attend the Food Hub.
Ali said: 'I am so proud of the girls. To hear how they've learnt about healthy eating and worked hard to come up with a community project. To then encourage the whole school to be involved to gather fruit and vegetables and share it the community is FABULOUS! I felt deeply touched that they wanted the Methodist Church project to help share it out at the village food hub. What an inspiration these girls are to everyone.'
Horrabridge Food Hub coordinator Janet Hearle said: 'It's absolutely fantastic what these girls have done with the help of the Argyle Community Trust - the volume of fruit and veg they brought over was quite overwhelming! We never expected this amount. it gave us a huge boost as that week we coincidentally didn't have a great deal of fruit and veg. The girls and the school put in so much effort to do this - thinking of the community at such a young age. We really were so blown away.'