Schools across Keighley could be twinned with their counterparts in Manzini, Swaziland, as part of the campaign to twin Keighley with the African city.

Keighley Town Council and rotary club last week launched their campaign to twin the two places and have invited organisations across Keighley to back them.

One of the ideas which town Mayor Cllr Nancy Holdsworth has drawn up is for school pupils to be involved.

Nessfield and Long Lee Primary schools are among the first in the town to show an interest in the idea.

The move could see schoolchildren in Keighley writing to their counterparts in Manzini and doing project work.

Cllr Holdsworth said: "We have sent an e-mail to our contact in Manzini asking him to send us a list of schools with their ages.

"I am hoping to match a school to a school.

"And because English is the language in Manzini it will be easy for the children to communicate.

"I don't know what Internet access they have but we can start as pen friends.

"It is just one small part of the idea."

Children could also help out with fundraising. Because the collections would be directed at certain projects, children would be able to see the results of their efforts.

Cllr Holdsworth added: "This is the beauty of it. We can have somebody who rings us up asking for something and we can find them it."

Jill Martin, acting deputy head teacher at Long Lee Primary School, had spoken to the Mayor about the campaign because the school had raised money before.

She said: "I hope our children will be able to find out what life is like there.

"What I would like to do is some fundraising where we know specific families or specific children to collect for.

"This is really to raise the children's awareness of what life is like there and they can raise money or send other things that are obsolete." Mrs Martin added: "Cllr Holdsworth envisages us finding out about specific people so it is more individual."

Head teacher at Nessfield Primary School Sandra Antcliffe said: "I feel that it is very important that the children learn about different cultures and different surroundings to increase their tolerance and reduce any prejudice they may have.

"We had a travelling group of Zulu warriors who were from South Africa and the children were very interested in learning about the aspects of their culture.

"That has got us thinking about having formal links with somewhere in Africa."

"We hope we might be able to use the Internet to communicate and write to them and swap information and pictures.

If there was any need for fundraising then we could do that."

Cllr Holdsworth also hopes churches and the hospital would be among the first to take up the challenge of establishing links with their counterparts in Swaziland