In brief...

Students will be provided with £50 per class as a resource. It can be used to start up a social enterprise, to fundraise or campaign or volunteer for a cause that they feel strongly about. Over a period of around five weeks they plan and organise their activity, and in so doing they simulate forming a charity or social enterprise that recruits the rest of the school in support of their initiatives. At the end of this period all activities cease. Classes then evaluate their activities - against real-life charities, and against each other.  A prize may be given to the most successful class. The Challenge is designed to be self sustaining. The first £50 made by each class must be kept for future years' projects.    

In long...

Giving Nation has designed a five-week scheme of work applicable across both secondary key stages. It can be used to support Enterprise initiatives or be part of your timetabled Citizenship lessons or involve your timetable being temporarily suspended. As an Enterprise initiative it also has cross curriculum potential, in particular for Maths (Budgeting) ICT (Designing publicity material) and English (Speaking and Listening in formal and informal circumstances). Our lesson plan summaries and additional resources are designed to be as structured or as flexible as you wish, and to be read in ten seconds during a busy day. Our additional resources (worksheets and briefings) provide more detail and background information such that teachers need not do any further research prior to teaching lessons. 

The £50 grant must be incorporated into a plan of action that is agreed by the whole class.  We suggest that the class is split into 3 groups to enable the activity to run alongside lessons lasting around 5 weeks. One group of students will have to work between lessons. We have called these "The Team". A second group, "The Volunteers", offer to help deliver the activity after it has been planned.  This might similarly involve extra-curricular commitments, but less than that of the Team. A final group, "The Trustees", support and scrutinise the work of the others but need not necessarily take any action out of curriculum time.

As well as offering class resources this web site also contains a suite of planning tools. These are used by 'the team' of students who lead the planning process. We hope that this will leave you, the teacher, the time and space to concetrate on learning outcomes.

The scheduling is obviously up to you!

However we would suggest the whole school is made aware of the imminent charity or social enterprise initiatives by selected classes and that the following measures are undertaken to ensure positive outcomes.

1. A preliminary assembly is undertaken explaining the Giving Nation Challenge. (See Giving Nation Challenge - Teacher`s Notes ) prior to the activity starting.
2. All staff are informed in advance about the Giving Nation Challenge in staff meetings/briefings
3. Time is scheduled in advance in the final week of the Giving Nation Challenge for activities to occur across the school. This might involve compressing or temporarily suspending the timetable 
4. Certain areas of the school are designated in advance as off limit where charitable/social enterprise events will not occur.

More details and ideas on scheduling are here

Example class diary here

More information about the students' planning site here