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20th February 2023

Every year we are delighted to take part in Raising and Giving (RAG) week. St Brendan’s students this year voted to support a brilliant local charity - The Bristol Soup Run Trust. The trust operates every night of the year to provide food and support for those experiencing homelessness and poverty in Bristol.

Students and staff collected and donated hundreds of cans of soup and pairs of socks and our Student Enrichment Officer Beth organised a number of fundraising activities throughout the week with the help of our Student Union members.

On Monday, Student Union members Veronica and Sadie ran a bake sale full of sensational sweet treats which included 60 donated doughnuts from Greggs. We’d like to thank our Student Union for meeting on the weekend to bake brownies, ginger cake and delicious fudge. Our personal favourites were the Twix and Kinder Bueno cookies that sold out within minutes! Followed by our first-ever Chess tournament that began during Monday lunchtime. We’d like to thank Bristol Chess Club for the loan of their timers! The Chess tournaments continued each day with a round of eliminations every lunchtime as students competed for a space in the finals.

On Tuesday we converted our second Café into an interactive Mario Kart space run by our Student Union members Veronica and Sadie. We were so pleased with the number of students who took part and the number of students who turned up to cheer on the competitors, however, Hazel thrashed her fellow students by completing the Rainbow Road with an unbeatable time. Well done Hazel, we hope you enjoy your prize!

Our fish in our pond outside the campus were joined by rubber ducks on Wednesday, as Beth converted our pond into a hook-a-duck station! Wednesday was our Charity Fair Day, with every duck paired with a selection of prizes, a tombola station, knock down the cans game and of course GIANT JENGA! Prizes included chocolates, sweets, ramen, books, yoga bands, puzzles, and American football! We'd like to thank our local Tesco, Morrison’s and Co-op stores for donating prizes. Whilst Veronica and Sadie and their friends ran the charity fair, the Chess Tournament was starting to heat up in Café Max as it was the semi-finals! As tensions began to raise with the number of contestants decreasing.

Student Union members – Veronica, Sadie and Daisy ran our Virtual Reality Beat Saber competition during Thursday lunchtime. With Students competing for more prizes, competitors had their very own cheerleading squad – our Academic Mentors spurring on our students! Whilst half of the team was in the virtual reality zone, Beth and the other students were eagerly timing our Chess finalists Eddie and Yilmaz. Yilmaz emerged as the winner and took home the Chess tournament trophy and chocolates. We’d like to thank all the chess participants, you all were amazing and put up a great fight.

Thursday’s activities ended with a grand raffle which included some fabulous prizes such as:
• 2 Everyman tickets
• A £30 The Real Greek voucher
• 2 Jungle Rumble Golf
• 1 RedPoint climbing voucher
• 4 Hollywood bowl tickets
• 2 Bristol Rovers tickets
• A Wake the Tiger family ticket
• A Tarr’s ice cream cake voucher
• 5 disk golf tickets at the Mendip Activity Centre

and more! We cannot thank Beth enough for spending her weekends collecting such a range of amazing raffle prizes and all of the businesses that donated vouchers, food and tickets.

It was great to see staff and students get together to take part in such fun activities and to be raising money for such a great cause.

Now, a drumroll, please…

Our staff and students donated a total of over 300 cans of soup and socks and raised £430 from the games, tournament & bake sale and donations for The Bristol Soup Run Trust.

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