Corrine Leech, assistant head of year 9 at The Winsford Academy, Cheshire, on organising school expeditions around the world for 12 years.
How did you first get into organising expeditions?
It happened by chance! My son who was a student at school at the time, decided he would love to take part in an expedition to Kenya with Camps International but the lady organising it left. Because I was already there and I was already doing all of the fundraising anyway, it made sense for me to take over and I thought it would just be a one-off but I fell in love with it and we’ve done it every year since (apart from during the pandemic).
Tell us about the fundraising aspect
Each student is required to fundraise around £4,000 to take part. We do all sorts - car boot sales, bake sales, you name it. I do a stall at all the local community events with tombola, face painting, candy floss and cake sales. We have built up some really good links to the community now and the school are also very supportive of the fundraising.
Why are expeditions especially close to your heart?
I’m from Africa and so I thought, I know what it’s going to be like but then you get to Kenya and the poverty is like nothing you’ve ever experienced in your life. It’s mind-boggling how poor some of these people are. And it’s the fact that in this day and age there are still communities in the world that don’t have running water or electricity.
It’s so important that we’re able to go over there and do so much work for those communities. The fundraising that the students have to do beforehand sets them up for life because they’re having to do something for a massive reward at the end of it.
The community spirit in Kenya is like nothing I have ever experienced anywhere else in the world. The kids have no phone signal so they’re actually talking to each other, playing card games and mixing with the locals.
Every single child who goes, comes back changed because of the experience.
How do expeditions differ from other trips?
An expedition makes the children more culturally aware because you stay in the middle of the communities and they are so rewarding. Students learn life skills – they’re building, they’re worming livestock, they’re planting trees, they’re doing beach clean-ups and they learn to scuba dive. It’s an amazing experience for them.
Tell us more about the planning of the expeditions
You need to give children the opportunity to fundraise so I launch 20 months before we go. Over the years, it has become a well-oiled machine. All the camps we go to with Camps International (we’ve been to the likes of Tanzania, Ecuador and Cambodia) are brilliant and the company itself is very well run which makes our experience what it is. We’re doing Peru next year.
Kenya is my favourite, so I do that every two years, but we have done Ecuador, Cambodia, Borneo, Tanzania and the Galapagos Islands. We’re doing Peru next year.
The fundraising that the students have to do beforehand sets them up for life because they’re having to do something for a massive reward at the end of it.
What makes all the hard work worthwhile?
It’s when the students come home and say I’m going to totally change the way I live for example not wasting water or food. They fully immerse themselves into the experience and I have had so many children who have gone on to similar experiences on their own later on which makes it all worthwhile.
