PRIMARY school children in Ashton have been left wild about meeting animals after a generous donation enabled them to go to Chester Zoo.
And the benefits of GTD Healthcare’s kindness will be felt at Hurst Knoll St James’ for years to come after a top up allowed them to buy new outdoor equipment.
The Ladbrooke Road establishment was left with a quandary after it received 200 tickets from the attraction for its pupils, but large travel costs to meet.
However, David Beckett and Anna Fox from the firm, which runs clinics and walk-in centres across the region, produced £2,000 to help the pupils experience something which will stay with them for a long time.
Benefits of the donation will also be long lasting as the sports equipment will help future classes.
When he faced Hurst Knoll St James’ school council, David explained: “We try to give a bit back to some of the communities, people and families that live in the areas in which we work.
“We try to invest in things to help. We’ve paid for floodlights at a local athletics track and this was another thing to give people a bit of help to go to Chester Zoo and some outdoor sporting equipment.
“I remember going to Chester Zoo and thinking the bat house was great but it stunk.
“When you get older, you’ll remember trips like that as even now, I can remember trips that I went on. Those are memories you’ll have for years and years.
“I can’t wait. It was really important to give you that opportunity to go to Chester Zoo and health is closely linked to activity in sport.
“It’s really important to keep people healthy, so we thought if we could just top up the money that enabled children to go to Chester Zoo to buy things for activity would be great. It looks fantastic.”
Views on what was then highlight varied, with one suggestion being the capybaras, another being a sloth.
David also heard how a bat flew into one of the children’s hoods!
And the effects of the donation were not lost on Kayleigh Pearson, deputy head at Hurst Knoll St James’.
She said: “We probably wouldn’t have been able to go on the trip at all.
“We applied for tickets for the whole school and Chester Zoo gave us 200, then it was like, ‘Hang on, coaches are expensive. What are we going to do?’
“I don’t think we’d have been able to go as the cost is out of reach for some of our families and we’d never want it to be a case of, ‘You can only come of you pay.’
“So we wanted it to be as inclusive as possible, the donation meant it was and every single child in the school could go.”