Pupils from Gomer Junior School awarded top prizes following World Safety Day competition

Children from Gomer Junior School got to work designing posters on either accident prevention or fire safety to celebrate World Safety Day on April 28 and were ‘incredibly excited’ to have been chosen as the overall competition winners.

Huhtamaki, a Gosport based food and drink manufacturing company, set up the competition, approaching junior and infant schools across the area to participate.

It comes as the company encouraged pupils to understand the importance of staying safe in their working environment.

Individual competition winners were selected by mayor of Gosport, Cllr Mark Hook, where the best posters designed by pupils from each category were awarded voucher prizes.

A further £2,500 from Huhtamaki was presented to the school for them to spend on a project of their choice.

Gosport and Fareham Multi Academy Trust executive, Georgina Mulhall said: ‘They were incredibly excited.

‘What's really lovely is that though they were delighted with the prize, you could see how proud they were of their friends who won the individual prizes as well. That's a real testament of how supportive the children are of one another.

She added: ‘We think we're going to use the money to develop our grounds. We take real pride in our grounds. We would personally like to have a solar powered water feature but because the prize was for everybody who had entered, we're going to ask the school council to decide what they'd like to spend the money on.

Individual voucher prizes were awarded to Jessica Cox, 11, Sofia Digby, nine, Amelie Cranmer, eight, Harry Pond, nine, Anastacia Oparah, 11, and Rupert Watson, nine.

Kerry Venn, operations manager at Huhtamaki Gosport said: ‘We are absolutely delighted with both the quality and quantity of the entries we have received for the competition and the mayor of Gosport was also extremely impressed by the standard of the posters that he judged.

‘It is clear that our local children have a brilliant grasp of the importance of a positive health and safety culture and we are delighted to do what we can at Huhtamaki to encourage this. Our thanks to everyone who entered the competition and our congratulations to the winning pupils and schools.’