Hillingdon's Douay Martyrs Catholic Secondary School joined eight other schools from across the country towards the end of March in Slough for the final of African Adventures’ School Geography Challenge to compete for the incredible prize of a trip to Kenya. 

Students took part in an all-day activity working in their school teams of four to complete a task focused on sustainable development.

Students were tasked with creating resources to highlight the importance of primary education to the families of Nakuru in Kenya, the town in which African Adventures works.

The judging panel, made up of African Adventures’ staff and Shelley Monk from the examination board OCR, were really impressed with the outstanding resources produced and an excellent day was had by all.

Rachel Northover, communications manager at African Adventures, said: “We were blown away by the standard of work produced but even more so by the motivation and commitment shown by all the students involved. It was wonderful to see them really engaging and increasing their knowledge of development issues in Kenya.”

The schools went home buzzing after the competition with their finalist certificates in hand and left the judges to make their decision on who deserved the prize trip to Kenya.

The Douay Martyrs Catholic Secondary School narrowly missed out on the Kenya trip with African Adventures revealing that Stafford Grammar School had won the Challenge and will be travelling to Kenya in June to volunteer at one of their partner projects in Nakuru.

The runner up prize was awarded to Millais School in West Sussex and they will soon be presented with African Adventures hooded jumpers and a handcrafted wooden African elephant as a token from the competition.

The School Geography Challenge, endorsed by OCR, sponsored by Kenya Airways and supported by the School Travel Forum, has provided schools nationwide the opportunity to engage their budding Year 9 and 10 geography students in the topic of international development and utilise the resources provided for their geography lessons.

African Adventures is a volunteer travel company that provides humanitarian and financial support to 27 partner community school projects in Ghana, Kenya and Zanzibar. With responsible and ethical volunteering at the heart of African Adventures’ work, the company is proud to have been awarded Silver in the Best Volunteering Organisation category at the British Youth Travel Awards and Runner Up in the Outstanding Volunteer Project category at the Global Youth Travel Awards, in 2016.

To find out more about African Adventures and their school volunteer trips to Africa, please contact Joe Pearson, Marketing Manager, at African Adventures on joe@african-adventures.co.uk or phone the African Adventures team on 02381 780957.