This Wednesday, December 11th, 10 students from Year 12 will be dancing the night away to raise money for The Mango Tree Project, starting from 2.30 pm.

Over the course of 2019/20, they will be fundraising for the Mango Tree Charity, in the hope of raising enough money to buy a school bus for the school located in Kenya, to help students in their journeys to and from school.  This coming summer of 2020, the group will be visiting the school in August and participating in their summer program, doing lessons and activities with the students over the two weeks. Fundraising events are planned throughout the year, which kicked off successfully at the school’s Christmas Bazaar last weekend, where they ran two stalls for selling cakes and sustainable items along with raising awareness for the charity, as well as over £500.

But next week the group face their biggest challenge so far – a 10 hour danceathon! We asked how preparations were going.

Have any of you done anything like this before?

None of us have ever done any exercise for this long before! Over half of us do dance shows/classes out of school, which is an advantage but we’ve never danced for longer than a couple hours, so it’s definitely a challenge!

What style of music are you dancing to?

We have a collaborative dance playlist that is over 12 hours long, containing a real mixture of styles, from musical ballads to 90’s pop and a lot of ABBA!

Are snacks allowed?

Yes, we will be providing our own snacks, which will hopefully keep our energy topped up!

Is sleeping/napping allowed?!

We are going to take shifts dancing, but we aim to have at least a handful of people dancing at one time. In these breaks, we can take naps, but to be honest it’ll be quite hard when there is blaring music and maybe some singing!!

Who is the motivator among the team?

I think we all motivate each other! We have two designated team members who aren’t dancing, but they will be staying with us the whole time, motivating, DJ’ing & controlling our social media accounts

What will be the hardest thing about it?

We all think the hardest part will be keeping our motivation high, rather than the physical aspect – as it is such a long time, so we need to keep spirits up and remember the great cause we are doing it for!

Do you have a name for your Danceathon dance troupe?

We’ve had discussions about our dance team name, and we’ve come to the conclusion of ‘It takes 10 to Mango’ – it’s a bit long, but we tried to combine the charity name with the dance, and that’s what we came up with!

If you would like to donate to The Mango Tree Project, please visit our Just Giving Page. Please follow our progress via Twitter.  Thank you! All support is very welcome.