Teacher Sarah Armstrong is racing ahead with a fundraising project to buy toys for her school.
She works at Calside Primary in the Rainbow Room Learning Centre with children who have additional support needs such as autism and developmental delays.
However, the centre is short of resources and Sarah decided that they should take matters into their own hands and raise money to buy items for the children.
Sarah, 48, said: “Unfortunately, our outdoor area is not resourced ideally to meet these needs. In fact, it’s a pretty blank tarmac canvas.
“We decided to raise money ourselves to purchase some equipment for our outdoor area, which will meet the children’s needs, be fun for the children and also help them to learn.
“It’s a bit like going into an office for adults and there are no chairs or keyboards, there’s no resources to work with.
“But now we have been raising funds and we have had a donation from Eon who have a power station near Lockerbie.
“They were very generous and that has allowed us to set up a mud kitchen outside.”
Sarah elected to do a 1,000km run at the school over a year to raise as much money as possible from donations.
She wanted to do an activity that would challenge herself, physically and emotionally, as the children in the Rainbow Room face physical and mental challenges every day in the school environment.
Sarah said: “The task had to be hard enough to be a real challenge, and also long term, to reflect that our children’s needs are also long term. It was also important to be mainly a physical activity because the school wanted to encourage the children to move more.”
With 190 days in the school year, she elected to run 5km every day which will take her tally to 950km, leaving 50km to complete on top of that, which she is going to attempt in one go with a route designed with the primary seven children.
Sarah started her marathon fundraising campaign last August and is now nearing the finish line.
In the last week of term she will run the final 5km with the Calside Primary children in the school playground.
On top of her running, there have been Run for Fun after school clubs and the pupils in the Rainbow Room have been aiming for 1,000 star jumps between them.
Sarah has received £2,600 from Eon plus a further £600 in donations.
Anyone wishing to donate can do so at her Instagram page mrsarmstrongrunsforfun on this link: https://instagram.com/mrsarmstrongrunsforfun
