The back cover of this month’s Round & About includes the message “Sometimes Even Tough Cookies Need Help”. You might like to know where this has stemmed from.

The answer is simply, it started as part of a conversation to do something nice for the children of Mull & Iona in recognition of the very challenging year 2020 has been for them in particular.

The Waterfall Fund

Dervaig Parent Council with the support of our Headteacher, Tricia Evans and Treasurer, Laura Mandleberg, led an application on behalf of all the schools on Mull & Iona to The Waterfall Fund. We were granted £5,000 to provide a gift of some sort for all the children/young people of Mull & Iona. GDPR made it very difficult to be exact on numbers but from new born to those reaching school leaving age we came to a total of 529!

Sharing & Spending the Award

Each Parent Council took responsibility for their share of the award. The children/students received presents including hoodies in house colours for Tobermory, those students attending Oban High School spent their share of the money on their Christmas party and vouchers. They made the decision to include the other students in the hostel from Tiree and Coll in their plans. There were vouchers to redeem in local shops, gifts including themed scientific gifts etc.
Mull & Iona Schools Cookie Challenge 2020

It was also suggested we do something to link the schools. One suggestion received was for each school to decorate a large cookie (thanks Joanne MacInnes). We decided it would be safer to make it a paper exercise. We needed a template and thankfully we had the very talented Dawn Reade to hand. Each school has designed a cookie, written a message and decided on a cookie flavour. … more in the full issue