Pupils' Malawi orphans help gets TV accolade

PUPILS at a Kirkham school are celebrating after big success on the small screen.
Youngsters at The Willows Primary School, on Victoria Road, starred in an award-winning television programme after helping orphans in the African state of Malawi.

They featured in ITV1's current affairs series Granada Edition which has won the Royal Television Society award for Best Regional Current Affairs Programme.

The programme showed Preston-based charity Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO) giving an assembly at The Willows Primary School and followed pupils and parents collecting hundreds of uniforms, shoes, and football kits to send to Africa.

Their help means that 4,000 Malawian children – many of them orphans – can go to school and make a better life for themselves through education.

Enjoyed

Peter Croft, headteacher at The Willows, said: "Our children were very moved by the assembly presented by the charity and they were motivated to go out and do something practical that had a real impact on the lives of the children in Malawi.

"Knowing we were helping the orphans in itself was a great experience for all of us, and the excitement of having the television crew was a bonus which we enjoyed."

The Granada film crew recorded the FOMO assembly and the pupils collecting all the donations.

They then travelled to Malawi with former footballer Viv Anderson to see how the orphans were being helped.

The episode won Best Regional Current Affairs Programme and the award was presented to the Granada team by the Royal Television Society at a ceremony in Manchester's Hilton hotel.

Series producer Gerrie Byrne said: "We were overwhelmed by the generosity at The Willows and even now, months after we filmed and the programme went out, parents are still donating uniforms which their children have grown out of."