Primary pupils in Armadale ran laps around their school field while getting paint hurled at them to raise money as part of Autism Awareness Week.
Students attending Southdale Primary took part in a sponsored ‘colour run’ last Friday (April 5), to raise money for Scottish Autism.
The unusual event was organised by the parent council, who had wanted to organise a charity event on the last day of term.
“Someone had the idea to do a colour run,” explained Angela Eaton, secretary of the parent council, “and as the school house colours of red, green, yellow and blue are those often used in the autism awareness jigsaw puzzle piece, and with the last day of term being awareness week, that’s the charity we went for.”
The colour run is an idea that originates in the United states where ‘color runners’ run, walk or skip a five kilometre course, getting hit with water and paint at various intervals to become a vibrant mess to promote health and happiness.
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“We didn’t have a set distance,” said Angela. “The kids could run or walk as many laps as they liked, or until we ran out of paint - we made about 40 kilograms of it.”
Due to the high cost of the paint required, parents made their own using cornflower, water and foodcolouring - as the parent council wanted as much money as possible to go to Autism Scotland.
On how the day went, Angela said: “We got good weather on the day, but the wind definitely wasn’t in our favour - a fair bit of the paint powder got blown back in the parents’ faces.
“The comments I’ve seen on Twitter say that the kids enjoyed the day.”
They have only collected around half of the sponsorship forms so far, but are already sitting on a total of £1180.80.
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“We were definitely never expecting to make that much,” said Angela.
“We’ve already decided to do this again next year, as Autism Awareness Week falls roughly on the last week of term each year.”
She added: “Though next year, we will definitely be purchasing the proper paint powder.
“We were making our own powder for eight or nine days, but it seemed to be all gone in no time.”
The run lasted for around half an hour and 165 pupils took part.
Anyone who wants to donate to celebrate the efforts of the children should donate straight to Scottish Autism by visiting: https://www.scottishautism.org/.
