Children from Sellincourt School have won a community award that will benefit the whole of Tooting.

On the 8th of March this year, Year 5 children from Sellincourt Primary School in Tooting started their 'City Pitch' journey. City Pitch is a competition run by the Mayor's Fund for London which empowers children to think about making a difference in their community.

The programme begun with a Leadership Day, in school, where the children engaged in a variety of leadership and group work activities. The day started with an assembly by motivational speaker Mr Beezy, which the children absolutely loved. They learnt about all the different types of leaders – democratic, autocratic and relaxed – and put their team work skills to the test when building a Lego figure.

The second half of the day was for the children to develop their own social action plans in groups. Sellincourt had a variety of ideas to tackle, such as homelessness, litter and pollution. However, the winning group (8 children) decided to tackle obsessive use of technology among families at home. Their idea is to create events in the local community to get people to put down their technology and discover what Tooting has to offer.
 

Since winning the competition in school the group progressed to the next stage, where they had to develop their idea further and create a video pitch to send to the judges. They decided on a group name, Tooting Community Time, and a slogan, Put technology aside and discover the world outside.

After a lot of hard work and effort, the video helped them to progress to the next round – an event at City Hall.  This was a dragon's den style pitch event where they pitched for £1,500 for their community project.

The day started with a quick practice and introduction from Mr Beezy. The children then watched all five other schools take part and were feeling very nervous but had an amazing pitch once up on stage.
 

And...success! Sellincourt’s pitch, alongside the other schools, won and they have been awarded the £1,500 to fund their event! The children were ecstatic, felt so proud of themselves and now can't wait to start putting their event together in the Autumn Term. Look out for more details in September!