Elle Jeffries makes a petite figure; slightly built and fair hair scraped back into a perfunctory ponytail. She is dwarfed by the cottage-suite chair she is sitting in, but does not seem at all phased by the prospect of being interviewed for a newspaper; quite the contrary in fact – she seems to take the experience in her stride, as though it is exactly the sort of thing expected of a twelve year old in these media-savvy days.
Elle is one of many thousands of school children who have been putting their talents to good use for Children in Need. Elle and other Woodham Academy pupils have raised an impressive £900 for their chosen charity.
Elle’s particular talent, however, is anything but usual: she has just completed a fundraising exhibition, and the skill she has been exhibiting to  schoolmates and staff-members is the art of competitive roller-skating.
Elle belongs to the Durham District Roller-skating Club and practises 15hrs a week at Shildon Leisure Centre. The programme she performed for Children in Need in the school’s gymnasium included a short ‘programme’ of jumps and spins , and a ‘showcase’ featuring the music of Queen and ABBA, taken from the club’s forthcoming Christmas show at Sunnydale Leisure Centre on the 14th December.
Asked about the £75 she raised towards the school’s great grand total, the Y8 pupil is quite blasé: she accepts charity fundraising as an integral part of school life and says she is happy to help ‘kids who haven’t got the things we have.’ Although, to be honest, this reporter wonders whether she is aware of the impressive nature of her achievement: given that most of her audience were Y11 students (not, perhaps, noted for fraternising with lowly Y8s); or that they were so impressed by what they were witnessing they got out their smart phones to alert others as to what was going on.
Woodham Academy is not alone in feeling a sense of pride over the selfless attitude of many of its young people when it comes to raising awareness (and money) for deserving causes. It has become almost commonplace for the public to come across groups of shivering youngsters chatting happily at bus-stops dressed as bears, bunnies, SpongeBob SquarePants or pirates of the Caribbean. In Elle Jeffries, however, they may have found something exceptional, and we would like to wish her the very best of luck as she prepares herself for trials for the international championships in Portugal next year.