Hi my name is Catherine and I mainly work with secondary school students doing their DofE. One of my groups that are doing their DofE Award is volunteering at my local junior school in Norland. We go to the school and work in the school grounds in their wildlife area. So far we have cut back trees and helped to make the pond a safer area so that the children can go hunting for mini beasts in the Spring term.

The pond was 4ft deep and was potentially dangerous so our first task was to empty all of the water from the pond and half fill it with hard-core so that it was only 2ft deep. The girls got really into the work and enjoyed getting in the pond to empty the water, especially when the school children came out to watch during play time!

After making the pond shallower we lined the hole with sand before putting in a new liner. With England’s weather being reliably wet it wasn’t long before the pond is filled with fresh rain water.