By Mrs Johnson, Charities Co-Ordinator

2020-21 has been the busiest and most successful year for charities and volunteering at school despite the Covid restrictions! A huge thank you to all parents and families who have supported the girls in their charity fundraising and volunteering over the year – it is all highly appreciated. Fundraising for charities since September has reached the fantastic total of over £16,000, beating last year’s total of £10,000! Charities we have helped so far are our two nominated local charities, The Log Cabin and The Harrow Club, plus charities put forward by the reps and Year groups, including The Felix Project, Women’s Aid, The Rainbow Trust, The Stephen Lawrence Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital, BEAT, Alzheimer’s Society, Safeline and Marie Curie.

Year Group Charities

This year each Year group was given a half term slot in which to raise money for their chosen charity. The Year 11s got the academic year off to a fantastic start as they raised over £1,000 for Women’s Aid.  Led by the Charity Reps, the Year 11s packaged up sweets and labels then sold them as ‘Sweet Messages,’ which proved very popular with students and staff alike. Their fundraising activities also included an exciting rendition of “Would I Lie To You” which put two teams of teachers, compered by Dr Stark, to the cunning bluffing test with some interesting reveals! Team captains, Dr Pearce and Miss Cagnino were joined by panellists, Mr Rogers-Endersby, Ms Eastwood, Mrs Robertson, Dr Snook, Ms Motyer and Mr Shoults. The event was streamed and recorded so all girls could watch in their year ‘bubbles.’

Into November and it was the turn of the Year 10s to raise money for the The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust over the coming weeks. The charity runs high impact programmes that inspire and enable young people from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds to succeed. The Year 10s held a number of activities, including Among Us Tournaments for Year groups 5, 6 and 7, which proved very popular with the younger girls! 

At the beginning of the New Year, Year 9 chose Beat as their charity – which supports individuals suffering with eating disorders.  Their main initiative was #MoveForBeat: Year 9 challenged us all to join in their quest to travel 235 miles from school to the Beat Head Office and back to school again before half term by walking, running or cycling.  The Year 9s also hosted a Staff/Parents Quiz online with Miss O’Connor. We were thrilled to hear that over £900 had been raised by Year 9 despite not being in school at all!

Following on next was Year 8 who raised over £2,600 for Alzheimer’s Society! A large number of the year group took part in various sponsored events to complete individual challenges ranging from netball shooting to baking, swimming and walking! The Year 8 Charity Reps also organised a Year 8 fair at the end of term selling bags of sweets and Easter themed goodie bags both which they sold in school and online. Finally, they also hosted an Easter Egg Hunt at school.

The summer term saw Year 7 choose Great Ormond Street Hospital as their charity. Before half term, the Year 7s held a series of Covid-safe bake sales where girls and staff could pre-order their cakes online, then pick them up on set days at school. They also held a very successful own clothes day where NHEHS was turned purple as girls were encouraged to come to school dressed in either the colour purple (the colours of GOSH) or to come to school in their pyjamas in exchange for a donation of £2. Their activities ended with a fair selling jewellery, cakes, sweets, handmade gifts and more, then a fun staff v students sports day in mid-June combined with popular sales of ice lollies at lunchtimes! To date, Year 7 have raised a fantastic £1500 for GOSH! 

Our Sixth Formers have also been keen to help charities close to their hearts. Saba M in Year 13 together with the Head Girl Team organised a “Bake for Bethlehem” cake sale in April for the Sixth Form to raise over £300 for a hospital in Bethlehem which has been struggling to deliver care to patients due to Covid and lack of funding. Meanwhile, the Sixth Form Charity and Art Repshave teamed up to fundraise for Safeline by selling exclusive handmade tops and t-shirts designed by the girls at pop up stalls at lunchtime in June and July.  This follows a very successful “Wear Red Day” at school in the spring term to raise money for Safeline, bringing the current total raised to over £1400. Safeline is an independent and non-discriminatory charity that provides specialist, tailored support for anyone affected by sexual abuse and rape and works to prevent CSE with children and young people at risk.

Finally, some of our Year 12s are also starting their fundraising for Save the Children to help children in Palestine at the end of this week and will be selling ice lollies in school on Monday together with postcards with treats and lovely summer holiday messages. 

NHEHS Local Charities: The Harrow Club and The Log Cabin

This year we have partnered up with The Harrow Club, who work with some of the most marginalised young people in West London and provide accessible and high-quality opportunities, which enable them to maximise their life chances and to enhance their personal development. Through creative, cutting-edge projects delivered by an experienced, committed team, they provide learning opportunities, routes to employment and critically increased resilience and well-being for young people aged 8 to 21. 

In the first seven days of December we supported The Harrow Club’s Christmas Appeal by selling Christmas cards (designed by Year 8) (raised over £450) and also by individuals taking on a sponsored challenge. These included running, reading, Latin vocabulary tests, music practising, learning new words – which raised £1500, £1350 of which was matched by corporate sponsors. Ten hampers were also sent to The Harrow Club and St David’s Care Home from our Year 7 hamper competition. We also took part in The Harrow Club’s Laptop Appeal to help their members take part in remote learning. Our fundraising brought in laptops, iPads and printers as well as £1850 in donations!

Finally we helped with their Summer Appeal to raise £40,000 to fund summer activities for children who will not have the opportunity to go on holiday. The activities will include day trips, residentials, activities. Any money donated between 8-15th will be match funded. Our Just Giving page made £1100 which will be match funded, making a total of £2,200 for the summer appeal!  We have now raised over £4800 for The Harrow Club in this academic year. 

A group of Year 9s visited The Harrow Club this week to learn more about their work, with fun sessions on zorbing and being coached by former Olympic boxing medalist Marcos from the the Cuban Boxing Academy. We look forward to working more with The Harrow Club next year.

We are also pleased to be supporting The Log Cabin in Northfields which does fantastic work in a setting where children and young people with additional needs or disabilities can socialise, grow and have fun alongside their mainstream peers. Our parent-staff team will be running in the Ealing Half Marathon in September to fundraise for them. We also raised money for the charity earlier this year by extending Christmas Jumper Day to three days in December 2020, when for a donation to The Log Cabin, girls and staff were able to wear Christmas socks/tights (8th), accessories/hair grips/bands (reindeer antlers etc) on the 9th, with Christmas Jumper Day itself on the 10th of December! We have raised £700 through these days and also a staff coffee and cake afternoon, with big hopes to raise much more in September by the half marathon team.

Other Charitable Initiatives

Many of us have been touched by the fantastic work by the staff at our local hospitals during the pandemic this year. Hannah in Year 12 wanted to show our gratitude by encouraging as many girls and staff as possible to write thank you letters to all the staff at Ealing Hospital, so she organised for the whole school to write letters, which she delivered to Ealing Hospital in December. Read more about it here.

We organised various collections for local charities over the year, the first one of which was for Harvest Festival where all forms were encouraged to create the best hamper and bring in the most food for Ealing Food Bank in October. The combined total weighed in at a fantastic 867 kg! In December, we collected well over 400 items, including food & healthcare items plus some treats, including puzzle books, slippers, chocolates & biscuits for Ealing Age UK who were delighted with our donations. For Green Week, there was also a book collection for the ROK Network (Redistribution of Knowledge Network). 

Senior School girls brought in a fantastic 2,300+ books for our collection for The Children’s Book Project in May with the Junior School also donating over four full trestle tables’ worth of books for the charity, which aims to tackle book poverty and to give every child the opportunity to own their own book. 

In June, we collected men’s clothing & shoes for the 300 refugees who are currently living in the Ealing area as part of Refugee Week, while form 8N also wanted to raise awareness of Refugee Week by performing a song called “Never Give Up.” This song was written by Porchlight service users and performed by detainees at Dover Immigration Removal Centre. Year 8 will be performing “Never Give Up” again as part of our Summer Concert on July 5th when we will be opening up a Just Giving page to give the audience an opportunity to support this cause via the charity Hear Me Out.

Also this month, our Year 7s and their ‘Big Sisters’ in Year 12 were due to take part in a sponsored walk for Plan UK in Pitshanger Park. Although the walk had to be postponed due to terrible weather on the day, the girls raised over £1100 for the charity. We are very grateful to all parents who donated so generously – thank you. We are hoping the weather will be kinder to us when we hold the walk again next year.

Performing musicians have been heavily affected by the pandemic, particularly with the cancellation of live performances throughout 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions and the freelance nature of much of their work. So our wonderful Visiting Music Teachers (VMTs) came up with the idea of a Musical Advent Calendar to raise much needed funds for their fellow musicians. The Calendar, which featured students from the Junior School all the way up to the Sixth Form, from beginners to Grade 8 musicians, playing solos, duets and ensembles raised over £300.

Also in December, Year 9 decided to do something nice for other people to celebrate the festive season. So they decided to give three gifts to the children at Havelock Primary School. First they handmade felt mice for the children, then the girls created, performed and filmed a short play about a mouse and how he tried to keep his family safe, which they shared with the primary school. The final gift was a video of the girls singing a short carol. The mice were delivered to Havelock School earlier this week and were given out the children following their quarantine. 

Our Year 8 NHEHS Amnesty Club have bene busy raising awareness of human rights issues all year which culminated in their walk in June along the Capital Ring from school to Richmond to fundraise for Amnesty. To date, they have raised £500.

Volunteering

As part of the Year 10 and 11 Enrichment Programme, students have been volunteering at a variety of locations (with Covid guidance) on Wednesday afternoons, including local primary schools, Oxfam and dog walking for the elderly. Some girls have also been helping litter picking in Ealing with LAGER Can Ealing – a great initiative suggested by one of our parents, Sadaf Maruf and her daughter Hana – as part of their DoE volunteering. Some students have also helped in Pitshanger Park, weeding, padding down pond walls and borders and digging.  A group of  Year 11 girls has also been working (as a bubble) at the Children’s Book Project, where they sorted over 1000 books on one visit!

During the past year, eight NHEHS teachers volunteered their time to take part in the Lumina programme, organised by Harrow School to support looked after children of all ages. The vision of the programme is to have a network of teachers to take part in this scheme so that hundreds of looked after children have extra access to devices and qualified educators who will support them in a subject/area of their choosing. As well as teaching, teachers acted as mentors, encouragers and role models to inspire the young people with whom they work, from primary school age up to the Sixth Form.

A final thank you to students and families who have got involved and donated so generously to our various charities this year. We are very much looking forward to another exciting and busy year for our charities and volunteering activities starting in September with our parent-staff team running the Ealing Half Marathon for The Log Cabin! Please see here for our brand new Just Giving page. Thank you!