GOALCO Golborne and Lowton Co-operative Trust Working as a co-operative partnership to raise aspirations, promote excellence and provide opportunities for young people

Who do we work with? Lowton J&I UCLAN Wigan And Leigh College Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust

Where did it all begin? Reddish Vale Technology College Hinning House Regular meetings with our Trust members Eco schools Visit to The Three Sisters Wetland project International schools project Cooperative conferences and links Proposals for future visits…

Reddish Vale We were inspired to form our Cooperative with a visit to a school which had a working farm on it. This school was particularly interesting as we saw how they had developed some cooperative projects including selling eggs to the local community and also setting up sales of coffee, directly dealing with a coffee seller in Africa.

Young co-operatives - the beginning of GoaLCo Hinning House

Meetings

Eco schools

Golborne Village Committee

Current project

Fundraising Events In order to help us raise funds GoaLCo teamed up with the PTFA and we held two Fashion Show evenings. We raised over £700 in one evening and it was really successful. We held an Easter raffle and also we intend to have a family night and a masquerade ball. We want to get as many of the community involved as possible.

Myerscough College GoaLCo is now part of a Trust and UCLAN is also a member. They provided us with the opportunity to look at Agricultural studies and gave a group of GoaLCo children a taster session of animal care, floristry and general agricultural studies. All children thoroughly enjoyed it and now we are looking at guiding some of our older children into a career in agriculture with the hope that they may be able to manage the wetland in our biodiversity project.

Biodiversity Project We would like to improve our surroundings and local community and as part of this we would like to create a wetland on the school field which will attract rare birds and insects. We have visited the Three Sisters which is one of the largest Wetlands in the North West and have been inspired by Graham Workman who works for WLCT. We are going to work closely with them to bid for some funding to complete our project within the next few years.

Helping the community

Junior University

Taking GoaLCo abroad… Our school is one of a few in Wigan who has the full International School Award. We are currently bidding for some funding to work with our exchange school IES Salvador Rueda in Málaga. Teachers will hopefully set up a kitchen Garden project and then the following year we have bid again for some other British Council Erasmus funding to do a multinational project with GoaLCo children. The other countries will include France, Spain, Latvia and Romania. Children shall have the opportunity to work with children from these other countries!

New co-operative links

Donations

What is in this for me? Membership= £1 Good attendance to the meetings Helpful ideas GoaLCo badges for attendance at 3 meetings and an event Membership bonus

Thank you!