Pictured: Mrs Liz Milligan (Year 9 learning Co-Ordinator) Amy Stevenson, Mr John Kelly (RE Subject Leader) Taylor Jackson, Kayla Geddis, Valerie Cromie (Head of Fundraising Tinylife), Connor McClure and George Grace.

The fab five were thanked & congratulated by TinyLife’s Head of Fundraising, Valerie Cromie.

As part of the RE studies a team of five pupils were tasked with researching and presenting their chosen charity to a panel of YPI judges. The students brought their presentation to life by incorporating a power point presentation, a quiz and one of the team shared the story of his family’s experience when his little brother was born prematurely at 29 weeks and 6 days, weighing 1420 grams. Their powerful presentation resulted in them scooping the top prize of £3,000 for their chosen charity, TinyLife.

Every day in Northern Ireland 6 babies are born too soon, some will arrive as early as 24 weeks and weigh as little as 1lb! TinyLife offers practical and emotional support to the parents of premature and sick babies through our range of Family Support Services including a hospital to home volunteer visitation service, family activity groups, breast pump loan service, baby massage, baby sensory and Tinygym (baby physio) sessions. The charity continues to fund research.

YPI is an organisation that encourages philanthropy in young people. They offer a reward of £3000 to any young group which has researched a local charity and can prove it will benefit the people of the local area. Our group chose TinyLife as one of our members had a personal experience with the organisation and the other members of the group saw the value of the good work they do. This group blew away the judges with their presentation and they were extremely proud to be able to give £3000 to this fantastic charity.