Alvaston head teacher’s hen-durance charity challenge for pupils

A head teacher is set to walk 3.6 miles (5.8km) dressed as a chicken with a colleague who will wear a fried egg costume, after making a fundraising pledge to pupils.

Graham Lobb promised children at St John Fisher Catholic Voluntary Academy in Derby they would take on the challenge on Friday, if they managed to raise £1,000 for charity.

Mr Lobb will walk from the school in Alvaston to St Mary’s Church in the city centre and be accompanied by colleague Nathalie Woodings.

Rather than being cooped up inside, the schoolchildren have been walking to reach their fundraising target for CAFOD, an international Catholic aid agency.

“It’s about having some fun with fundraising, the children have really enjoyed the walking and the fact that myself and Miss Woodings are going to dress up and do this, it’s creating a bit of excitement around school,” Mr Lobb said.

The money raised by the children for CAFOD will go towards chickens for vulnerable families in Kenya, to provide produce they can sell to earn a living, and the charity will provide training on how to look after the birds.

Each class at St John Fisher has been set the target of walking 211 miles (339.5km) the distance between nine jubilee churches in the Diocese of Nottingham.

An extra 200 miles was walked across the whole school to bring the grand total to 1,411 miles – the distance from the school to the Vatican.

“The whole school has been fundraising so it’s close to 190 children, so roughly each child needs five people to sponsor them £1.

“I didn’t feel it was an unrealistic target amount with the current challenges that everyone’s got with the cost of living,” Mr Lobb added.

He said colleagues and friends had pledged to make up the difference if students struggled to reach the target of £1,000.

“They all want to see me looking silly dressed as a chicken and to be brutally honest I think my mum will also be doing the same thing as well, and my wife, because they want to see me dressed up, they want to see me looking silly,” Mr Lobb said.