The Girls’ School, along with the Preschool, have put their weight behind Sir Ray Avery’s Life Pod Appeal to raise funds for infant incubators especially designed for Third World conditions. The girls’ fundraising got off to a fantastic start last Friday raising $2,390 in one go. After an appeal to families was placed on OLE, the girls brought donations and then gathered on the lawn to create a huge banner to help raise awareness. They have already raised enough funds to buy one Life Pod and have set their sights on raising $20,000 over the course of next year – enough to enable the purchase of ten Pods.

Sir Ray's charity, Medicine Mondiale, launched a $2 million global fundraising appeal at the end of October. The appeal aims to get the high-quality, affordable baby incubators into production for Third World hospitals. Designed for a hot climate where supplies of clean water and power are intermittent, the incubators will be made with a joint venture in India, costing around $2000 per pod. This is compared with more than $40,000 for the models currently available that are not suitable for hot, unsanitary conditions. Unlike conventional incubators, the Life Pods are designed to work in hostile environments; they are able to purify their own air and water and have the resource to run for 10 years. Each LifePod has the potential to save up to 500 babies.

Sir Ray has a daughter at the Girls’ School and another at the Preschool and is an avid supporter of Saint Kentigern. The Preschool were first to make an ‘advertisement’ when the children sat down to form a big heart with the subsequent photo appearing in the Weekend Herald.

The creation of the overhead banner for an aerial shot at the Girls’ School was an amazing exercise in logistics masterminded by parents, Fiona and Charlie Marshall, Anna Taylor, Sharon Bluck and Jules Cheeseman. Mr Marshall is well known for his fabulous photography at school events and so bravely volunteered to be the photographer while 200 girls and their teachers were organised into lines to hold 200 printed A2 size cards over their heads. This was no mean feat! The cards needed to be in just the right place and the girls needed to keep still! Not so easy when you’re only five years old! There was plenty of shuffling the lines to get it right – but Mr Marshall admits that in the end, just a ‘wee bit’ of Photoshopping was required to get the finished result! The result is fabulous and we hope it will encourage others to also donate.

To read more about Sir Ray’s work or to make a donation to the cause, visit: https://mondialelifepod.com/

Check out a time-lapse showing the creation of the overheard banner: http://goo.gl/CZOFds

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