EIGHT teachers at a school in Sherborne are running, walking, swimming and cycling to raise money in aid of refugees in the UK.

All of the fundraisers teach at The Gryphon School and are taking part in the Miles for Refugees challenge, a national campaign organised by the British Red Cross.

By signing up to Miles for Refugees, each fundraiser is given a target that corresponds to a distance a refugee would need to travel.

The teachers have been set an accumulative distance of around 1,000 miles, which relates to the distance a refugee would need to travel from Damascus to Athens.

Caroline Moore is one of the teachers taking part in the challenge. She was set a personal distance of 108 miles, which is the distance between Calais and London.

She said: “We have had some refugee students at the school so we wanted to do something to raise money and awareness.

“We are all quite good friends and wanted to do something so we decided to set a target together.

“The money will go towards helping refugees, for clothing and helping them with things like application forms.”

The other teachers taking part in the challenge are Sally Dutton, Caroline Dallimore, Bethan West, Beth Martin, Laura Clark, Jo Heath-Whyte and Sally Kurpierz.

They have been talking about the challenge and refugees with their students at school and the group is planning to hold an assembly about the challenge in the future.