By Mrs Johnson, Charities Co-ordinator

We’ve another busy term of exciting activities and events lined up for our charities! We have now raised nearly £14,000 for charity since the beginning of the academic year, including nearly £3,000 for Unicef in Ukraine last term with our dress up, bake and book sales in addition to sales of our lovely hand knitted/crocheted yellow/blue sunflowers. 

Year 7’s chosen charity this half term is Refuge and the students got off to an early start with their fundraising with a Kahoot quiz during lunchtime involving staff and students.  The Year 7 Charity Reps are also busy planning a mid-term fair where they can make and sell items with proceeds going to the charity, while they hope to hold a fun sports event later in the term.

Our Humanitarian Leads are gearing themselves up for a week of diverse activities for Global Cultures Week starting on May 9th. They will create displays in the atrium and are inviting in an Anti-Slavery speaker to lead an assembly.

We will also be supporting the Toilet Twinning Charity with a cultural dress up day.  The charity encourages people or organisations to donate  £60 to twin their toilets, and by doing that help fund a project in a poor community that will enable families to build a basic toilet, have access to clean water and learn about hygiene – an essential combination that saves lives. We’re hoping we might also be able to twin one of our toilet blocks with a block in a school in another country.

Strengthening our links with Care 4 Calais, we are planning a Sports Day on May 19th for the refugee children at their hostel, with traditional Sports Day fun events like the egg & spoon, sack, skipping and running races. We will also be marking Refugee Week on June 20th with an assembly.

We will be running a collection for the Days for Girls charity  in the week of the 16th May. Days for Girls helps promote menstrual equity, health, dignity and opportunity for all. During the lockdown, Carmen H (Year 10) volunteered with the charity to help make reusable hygiene kits.

In the last week of May we will be supporting and fundraising for Just One Tree Day – a charity founded by Northwood College alumna Amanda Bronckhorst. The mission of the charity is to get every nursery, school and college planting trees.

Looking ahead into June we have an action-packed month! We will be encouraging our Year 7s and their Big Sisters in Year 12 to take part in a Sponsored Walk in a local park on the 10th in aid of the Harrow Club. For our other designated local charity, The Log Cabin in Northfields, we are delighted to resurrect the NHEHS tradition whereby our Year 10s hold a summer party/fete at school for the children from The Log Cabin.

We hope to repeat the successes of last year’s book collection for the Children’s Book Project in mid June, where we will be asking for students from both Junior and Senior School to bring in their pre-loved children’s books for the charity.

On June 26th we will be at the popular Party in the Park in Pitshanger, which makes its return after Covid. More details to follow!

Our final charity event will be a garden party at St David’s Care Home on 28th June, where our volunteer choirs have been entertaining the residents all year with their music and singing.

Volunteering activities are continuing this term too, with our independent volunteers and parks groups active in the community. Our volunteer choir is also still regularly visiting local care homes and we are excited to make our first visit to a new care home shortly, Blakesley House in Ealing.

Thank you for your continued support and generosity!