by Lorraine Gibson.

When seven-year-old Neve Farrell heard about Emily Collins, a young aid worker who, despite being ill, cared for impoverished children in Africa, she wanted to help children, too.

It was while visiting Jill Mumford, Neve’s mum’s former teacher and headteacher of Hampreston School, who was fundraising for Emily’s Ugandan orphans charity, that Neve learned the full story.
Emily, also a Hampreston pupil, was diagnosed with bone cancer at 16 yet still journeyed to Africa to support abandoned street children; she also raised funds to help build a school for the orphaned children that bears her name today.
Neve, a Year 3 pupil at Hayeswood School and a shining example of Emily’s inspiration, told her mum Ellie: “I thought about people in Africa not surviving, and babies being unwell without fresh water.”

Aware of the danger of unclean water and the needy African street children, she wanted to raise money to donate to both Oxfam and the Emily Collins’ Ugandan School.
Pointing out that: “Children in poor villages in Africa have to walk a long way for fresh water,” she vowed to walk two miles a day for two weeks, come rain or shine, to raise money.
And she did. Along Pamphill, By The Way, Sandbanks, the New Forest, Baiter and Poole Quay.
“Her favourite walks were the beach ones,” says Ellie, “with plenty of stone skimming and shell collecting.
“One walk was two miles of dribbling her 12-year-old brother George’s football!”
And she did it.
Neve, a keen ballet dancer and animal lover, raised more than £250 – £173 for Oxfam and £85 for the Emily Collins school – and says: “I feel really happy and so excited. I felt proud to finish – and wet. I hope this makes it easier to get water in a village and equipment for the school.”
Her parents said: “She’s so happy to have smashed her target and hopes to make a little difference. It’s a little amount, but a lot of love.”

Neve says that her next fundraiser might be a cake sale for the RSPCA. Watch this space.