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Teacher’s Got Talent is a new fundraising challenge from international development charity, VSO, working in partnership with education recruitment specialist, Randstad Education, the new name for Select Education. The challenge will raise vital funds for developing countries and provide schools with an exciting new way to teach the Global Citizenship curriculum and the chance to win resources and support.

VSO, which tackles global poverty by sending volunteers to share their professional expertise in some of the world’s poorest communities, is using Teacher’s Got Talent to show how skill sharing can be used as a way to help people lift themselves out of poverty.

Teachers will nominate themselves to learn a skill, whilst students put themselves forward to share one of their skills.  The skill could be anything from keepie-ups, playing an instrument or speaking a foreign language to rapping or a cultural dance.  Everyone pays £1 to vote for which teacher they would like to learn which skill.

Teacher’s Got Talent is introduced with an animated film telling the story of Abass, a beekeeper from Sierra Leone.  The story explains how causes of poverty are identified and how VSO’s solution, to send a volunteer to share skills with local people, has helped Abass.

This simple and effective way to bring a global dimension into a school is accompanied by an assembly plan and follow-up activities for lessons and extra curricular activities.  This is a whole-school, global citizenship challenge, with links to Citizenship, PSHE, Geography, and Key Skills curriculum areas.

Schools that get their donations in by March 19th will be eligible for two prizes provided by publisher HarperCollins and education recruitment specialist Randstad Education. 
 
The Global Fundraising Award for the best fundraising effort will provide a primary and secondary school a whole suite of new resources from HarperCollins Publishers to stock up their library, including fiction, educational books and computer learning resources.

The Global Champion Award will be awarded to a primary and secondary school where students went the extra mile to engage with global issues. The winners will receive either an exclusive creative drama workshop with the Chickenshed Theatre Company, courtesy of Randstad Education, or a school visit from a HarperCollins children’s author, which will include a talk and a Q&A session.

Commenting on the competition, Chief Scout Bear Grylls said:  “As Chief Scout, I know that young people have such an exciting variety of skills to share.  Teacher’s Got Talent gives them the opportunity to teach and showcase their skills in school, learn about life in other countries and raise funds to help VSO fight poverty’.

To register for Teacher’s Got Talent visit http://www.vso.org.uk/act/active-communities/teachers-got-talent.asp.  Teachers with questions about participating in Teacher's Got Talent can contact Ella Stewart on 0121 426 6806 or email ella.stewart@vso.org.uk 

Editor's notes

For further information or to request an interview please contact Rachel Trayner on 020 8780 7265, 07738982122 or Rachel.Trayner@vso.org.uk

VSO is an international development charity that works through volunteers.  Since 1958 over 33,000 volunteers have worked in over 120 countries.  Today there are over 1600 international volunteers working in 42 countries around the world.

VSO volunteers are provided with flights, accommodation, and an allowance to cover basic costs.  UK public sector professionals volunteering for between six months and two years are entitled to claim pension contributions providing they return to the public sector for a minimum of six months on their return to the UK.  An average initial application of interest to VSO takes just 20 minutes to complete - please call 0208 780 7500 or log on to www.vso.org.uk for more details

VSO needs to raise £10 million each year in the UK in order to continue its vital work: working through volunteers to fight poverty in some of the world's poorest communities

Randstad Education, the new name for Select Education is a specialist division of Randstad, the world's second-largest staffing services group.  It is the leading UK and global educational staffing specialist, providing quality, individual service to over 10,000 teachers and support staff and to the 15,000 schools who have used its service throughout the UK.  Randstad Education Teachers, Assistants and Lecturers work alongside 135,000 young people per day across 2,500 schools a week, positively shaping their lives at nurseries, schools, colleges and training organisations across the UK.

Established in 1993, Randstad Education has a network of over 35 offices throughout the UK with teams of education specialists, including dedicated Primary, Secondary, Special Needs and Early Years consultants.

Working closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Home Office and other government bodies, it also partners on ground-breaking education research with the Institute for Public Policy Research and Campaign for Learning. As a result the company has pioneered many aspects of educational staffing, from quality controls and systems through to introducing new services for SEN and Teaching Assistants.

Randstad Education plc is an accredited Investor in People (IIP) organisation, a member of the REC (Recruitment and Employment Confederation) and is accredited with the international quality standard BS EN ISO 9002.

HarperCollins UK publishes a wide range of books, from cutting-edge contemporary fiction, to block-busting thrillers, from fantasy literature and children’s stories to enduring classics. It also publishes a great selection of non-fiction titles, including history, celebrity memoirs, biographies, popular science, dictionaries, maps, reference titles and education books, and its digital business is thriving. With nearly 200 years of history HarperCollins publishes some of the world’s foremost authors, from Nobel prize winners to worldwide bestsellers. In addition it publishes the works of Agatha Christie, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. It was the first major UK trade publisher to go carbon neutral in December 2007.

HC UK and International is responsible for the UK and Ireland, India, Australia and New Zealand and is a division of HarperCollins Publishers, one of the leading English-language book publishers in the world, with operations in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. HarperCollins Publishers is a wholly-owned division of News Corporation, the media conglomerate and parent of Times Newspapers Ltd, British Sky Broadcasting and Twentieth Century Fox.