A TEENAGER has dedicated his spare time to raising money for school supplies and mental health support.
15- year-old Daniel Lloyd is in year 10 at St Birinus School in Didcot and in October 2019 he won the Didcot Town Council Young Fundraiser Award.
The teenager was inspired to start raising money after he lost a close friend last year.
He was then motivated to take on the 5K obstacle colour run in May in his friend’s memory and he raised money for the JR hospital in Oxford.
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Mr Lloyd’s mother, Adrianna Lloyd said: “After the run talk at home turned to the boys in school and how they were feeling and the support they were getting. It turned into a bigger talk about schools in general struggle with funding and this is the main reason some schools do not have the resources to help support students with mental well-being as well as they would like.
“Mental health was more in the media and news generally and we had heard about a mental health first aid course. Daniel set out to raise money for his school, hoping to raise enough to send two teachers on such a course to benefit students at school.”
Daniel then spent the summer holding cake sales and a raffle which raised more than £1,300 and all the money went to his school.
The headteacher of St Birinus School, William Manning, recently confirmed that the money will be used to bring someone into school to train 16 members of staff in mental health first aid.
Daniel has created the ‘Markers for Mindfulness’ campaign. He collects school supplies and donates it to schools affected by cuts to help them free up the budget for mental health support.
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Ms Lloyd said: “The idea behind Markers for Mindfulness came about after reading a BBC article over Christmas. It focused on a school in Birmingham who were struggling with supporting the students who most needed it because they didn’t have the budget. They were choosing between school basics or additional support because of funding cuts.
“We came up with the idea of Markers for Mindfulness. The idea was to collect school basics and send them to schools most affected by cuts. By having some basics, it was hoped it may help free up a small amount of budget for student support and wellbeing.”
Boxes have been sent to schools across Oxfordshire, so far 10 boxes have been sent to schools in the Didcot area as well as Farringdon, Bicester, Chipping Norton and Banbury.
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Ms Lloyd said: “The charity work last year raised £2,190. Markers for Mindfulness is different as it’s encouraging recycling and donations. It’s hard to work out an amount for all the items passed onto the schools. Each box was full of paper, pens, pencils, colour pens, glue sticks, notebooks, whiteboard markers plus tea coffee and biscuits for staff.”
Drop boxes were set up at The Space Store and Civil Hall in Didcot and they were able to share the drop box at Cornerstone Arts Centre with Secret Santa 365 and one at Hendred Stores in East Hendred.
After asking the community for donations, hundreds of pens have been recycled and donated. Charity store Changing Lives, donated a large amount of stationery and others kindly donated new items.
The teenager and his mum are asking for stationery donations to help fill more boxes to give to schools for their ‘Markers for Mindfulness’ campaign.
Ms Lloyd said: “The great thing is, everything being passed on is going straight into our schools to help them and support them not sat at the bottom of a draw at home or into landfill. There are plans to have two new drop off points, Boundary Park in Didcot and hopefully one in Oxford. While the others continue to support and host a box.”
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However, due to the coronavirus, all drop off points are currently closed, and Daniel suffers with asthma so is social distancing, which has prevented him from being able to get any boxes to collect items.
To help the ‘Markers for Mindfulness’ cause visit their Facebook page via, www.facebook.com/Markers-for-Mindfulness-106969987497021.
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