A FIVE-YEAR-OLD Portland girl has started her own mission to raise money for poor children in an African school.

Eloise Smail was so moved by teaching assistant Dianne Stone’s stories of her visit to an impoverished school in Kenya that she told her parents she wanted to help.

And the Southwell Community Primary School pupil has decided that as the children at the Gantaraki School in Chogoria walk miles to school every day, she wanted to take on a five-mile walk across Portland.

Eloise will be taking on a round trip around the island today starting at the school with her dad Jamie Smail, 36.

She said she wants to help out her pen friend in Africa.

She said: “I want to help them so they can get more things than they have now.

“And I want to raise money so they can buy more things to do drawing with and have more colourful things in their school.”

Eloise’s mum Sian, 31, said they were at home in Avalanche Road when her daughter said she wanted to help.

Mrs Smail said: “She really wants to raise money for them.

“It’s the fact that they don’t have half as much as us and she finds it quite amazing that they don’t have the simple things that she has at school like glitter, and she wants to do all she can.

“I’m proud as punch of her, bless her.”

Eloise and Jamie will set off at 10am today and go past Fancy’s Farm via Portland Bill and Church Ope Cove before heading back to the school to be met by Sian and Eloise’s two-year-old sister Rosie.

Mrs Smail added: “It is far for Eloise’s little pair of legs.

“But she knows some of the children at school in Kenya have to walk at least that far to go to school every morning and though it’s a once in a year thing for her, it’s an everyday occurrence for them. It’s so nice that she’s realising how lucky she is in comparison.”

Teaching assistant at Southwell, Dianne Stone, inspired the sponsored walk when she returned from a trip teaching at the school in Kenya.

Mrs Stone is one of a group of teachers from Weymouth and Portland who went to the schools they are twinned with in Africa.

Her school and Grove Infants School are paired together with the Gantaraki School.

Mrs Stone said: “I came back and we talked about the children there.

“Eloise felt she wanted to do something and I’m absolutely thrilled.

“It’s a lovely idea.”

Mrs Smail said donations for sponsorship for the walk can be handed in or sent to the school.