BUYING a cow or raising enough money to train a midwife was Katherine Sharp's aim when she set her school friends a fundraising challenge.
She hoped to collect around £100 – enough to pay for one item from CAFOD's World Gift catalogue, which helps people in the developing world.
However, the girls at Ursuline Convent High School in Brentwood rose to the challenge and raised 20 times that sum – enough to buy 16 gifts and donate £1,400 to the charity, a representative of which dropped in to the Queens Road school to thank them.
Katherine, 15, told the Gazette: "I thought it would be good to raise enough money to buy a CAFOD gift.
"I was aiming for around £100, so I stood up in the Year 7 assembly, explained the plan and asked forms to come up with a simple fundraising idea.
"It became quite competitive with forms seeing which could raise the most cash.
"People came up with some really good ideas - they made cakes and bracelets to sell, organised a sponsored run, and we held a non-uniform day too."
Katherine undertook the project as part of her work with the school's justice and peace group, which as well as fundraising does all it can to highlight the problems faced by people living in poorer nations.
The teenager, who lives in Wickford, explained: "I joined the group as I feel very strongly about the children in Africa.
Teacher Margaret Doe, who oversees the justice and peace group, said: "It was Katherine's idea to ask forms to raise small amounts of money, and it really took off."
Now Katherine and her peers are working on the group's next project - the annual justice and peace week in February, when among other activities, they stage a rich-man, poor-man meal contrasting the food we eat with that of people in the Third World.
