Walking around the world is no easy task but the pupils, staff, and parents at the Enniskillen Integrated Primary School made it look easy as they raised £2,660 for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Splitting up into classes, staff, parents and an extended family and friends’ group, everyone stepped up the challenge to walk around the world with the school community walking 25,482 miles in the month of March.

March coincided with Integrated Education Month when integrated schools celebrate what makes them a special place in the community but the decision to donate to Marie Curie was a poignant one. In the past 12 months, there have been four deaths to cancer within the school community, two of those parents of children.

Principal Adele Kerr spoke to the The Impartial Reporter about the initiative. She said: “A lot of the families had been finding the last lockdown very difficult, with darker evenings and more screen time because of home learning and some were finding it difficult to get out and about with the children for some exercise.

“We wanted to keep everyone active as it’s good for physical and mental health.”

Adele had taken inspiration from a challenge she had completed previously. She said: “I had been taking part in the Mizen to Malin Head fundraiser with Enniskillen Royal Boat Club and it inspired me to work on something for the school, we have a lot of pupils from different countries around the world and a lot of people in our school community have relations and friends in different places.”

Adele laughed as she explained the school community didn’t walk the actual circumference of the world.

“We didn’t walk the distance of the circumference (24,901 miles) because we wanted to learn about as many places as possible. Instead, we took a route to visit the countries round the world so for example we walked from Enniskillen to Belfast and then to Liverpool as one of our teachers is from Liverpool.”

She added: “We used Facebook so we could put up a picture of the countries flag and a bit about it like the capital city and then in some countries we had a video from someone who lived there. Sometimes they were members of a pupil or staff’s family or we had some countries where one of the parent Jane Holland had made contact to get us a video from that country.”

Mrs. Kerr and the entire school community were grateful for the all support and enthusiasm for their efforts.