Giving Nation Challenge
The Citizenship Foundation has developed curriculum materials on charitable giving for secondary school citizenship classes through the Giving Nation Challenge, a project funded by the Office of the Third Sector.
The Challenge aims to both educate pupils about charities in the classroom and enliven the school environment through extracurricular charitable activity.
As part of the Challenge, pupils are taken through the process of forming a mini-charity or mini-social enterprise in their class, and encouraged to compete against other classes for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the rest of the school.
Schools taking part in the challenge are provided with free curriculum materials, satisfy the statutory enterprise and citizenship national curriculum criteria, and are given £50 per class for a start-up grant. Schools using the challenge are also automatically entered into the Giving Nation Awards, which recognise the achievements of schools involved in giving.
The first full year of the Challenge started in September 2007. 148 schools have so far registered for the challenge, and 85 of these schools have requested grants. The materials have been sent out to 4,500 lead charity teachers and 5,000 headteachers.
