HISTORY students have helped raise enough money to buy a goat and a toilet for a village in the developing world.

The GCSE history students from Haughton Community School, at Darlington's Education Village, decided to raise money for Oxfam by handing in any small change they had at the end of lessons.

Teacher Amanda Thomas also made a donation and the class voted to spend the money on a goat and the toilet from the Oxfam Funusual Christmas 2005 catalogue. The catalogue details a wide range of goods that are needed by community projects in areas where Oxfam works.

Thanks to the pupils' efforts, a village somewhere in the developing world will be able to join a goat-loan scheme. This means that the first female goat that is born to the goat they bought will be given to another family, and so on.

The goats are used to provide manure to help crops grow and to provide about 12 pints of fresh milk a day which can be used by the goat's owners or sold.

The toilet is a simple way of helping to stop the spread of killer diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

Chris McEwan, Darlington Borough Council's cabinet member for children's services, said: "It is great that these pupils have thought about people in the Third World and their donations of loose change will make a real difference to people's lives."