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Schools Charity Project 2010
I was asked to give a talk to three classes of school children who were at the University to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. On arrival at the Zoology building everything was set up for the school children and I was last in place. I decided to make it quite low key as I soon found out the children and teachers knew nothing about racing pigeons. Unfortunately it was a terrible day, snowing heavily and very cold.
The three school classes expected were:
Riverside Primary.
Woodside Primary
Kittybrewster Primary
Unfortunately Woodside Primary could not attend because of the weather. St Peters Primary which is quite close filled their place. There is a school bus which travels round most of the schools in Aberdeen advising on natural history and was also present for the children to visit. The University put on a wonderful display for the children and also presented them with a cake to celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday.
The talk on the racing pigeons went very well, with all the children having the opportunity to touch them. It was decided to donate an entry to the Kingslea One Loft Race for the children to have the fun of seeing their pigeon racing over a maximum of 8 weeks on computers in class and supervised by their teachers. I was shocked at the response by the children and teachers to this offer.
I was given a tour of the Natural history building and was surprised to see so many computers. I was also shown the students teaching classes which were a far cry from when I went to school. It was abundantly clear to me these kids are computer literate and spend a lot of time on them.
After being thanked by a member of Pigeon Basics I posted my disappointment with the local journals for not doing a feature on it. They were in attendance and took a multitude of photos which were never featured. I also reported that I had given an entry into the race for the children and had funds allowed it would have been nice to give each school a fully paid entry, I could never have guessed at the response I was to receive. One guy posted he would donate a tenner and started the ball rolling. I ended up with £300 after a £50 donation from Davy McCallister who is a scrap merchant in Aberdeen. This was enough to give the three schools and also the one that could not attend a fully paid up entry into the Kingslea One Loft Race. The school bus was also given a bird in the race.
So I had the joy of telling the University what had happened over the weekend. This led me to think about promoting pigeon racing to the children of the future. These children spend a lot of time in front of computers so I though if we cannot bring children to the pigeons why not bring pigeon racing to the children via computers.
I put the idea to several people who all thought it was a good idea if I could get enough gift birds to sell and make £2,400 this would allow 40 schools to have a paid entry with the £2,400 being put up as the prize money. Kevin Elliott went on his phone rounds and started asking for gift birds. I put the idea to Richard from pigeonbasic.com who thought it was a good idea and said I could run the sale on his site. Total birds promised were 18 which kicked the idea off to a flying start. Birds from National Champions were promised and the first sale was held on the weekend of 13th March and turned out to be very hectic. After the final tally we had raised £1,455 and there were some cash donations giving us a grand total of £1,700. We did not expect this amount and were pleasantly surprised. Because we were going to have another sale Kevin Elliott was hunting out new pigeons before we had finished the last one.
But this next sale was going to be something special and we were gifted pigeons from 8 National winning lofts, Gordon Willox from Peterhead who won the Alencon Gold Cup race into Scotland with the Scottish National Flying Club and promised a young bird direct from the hen which he named Heather's Dream after his late wife. This bird flew 621miles to get home to Peterhead. The partnership of G.W & P Macaloney from Lanarkshire donated a special bird which was in demand at the sale, along with 6 other National fliers. This time we had 43 lots and I had to get help in to cope with the demand. Even them it was hectic.
The sum raised by this sale was a staggering £3,850. This means 80 schools will be able to have a fully paid bird in the race and a prize fund of £4,800
To everyone that donated, helped and to the bidders, thank you very much for supporting this venture.
Thanks to Richard our webmaster and Gemma for their help.
