By Mrs Johnson, Charities Co-ordinator

It’s been a busy half term for our charities and volunteering with fundraising and collections, particularly for our Year 11s, with their work for The Felix Project.

Year 11 Fundraise for The Felix Project

This half term, it was the Year 11’s opportunity to raise funds for a charity of their choice – The Felix Project. The first event was a very popular bake sale, with food ranging from cupcakes and brownies to cookies and fudge, along with eggless sweet treats. There were Halloween pumpkin cakes and rainbow fudge! Everyone helping out had so much fun whether it was baking or selling.

Next up was Dodgeball in Onesies! On Friday the 7th of October Year 11 put on a charity dodgeball tournament which was a huge success. Some teams even made their own personalised t-shirts!

The next event was the innovative Rent a Friend! The main purpose of the rent a friend event was designed for people to get to know each other a bit better, with the hopes that it would help people who wanted to have someone to talk to, or get advice. Knowing that sometimes it is difficult to talk to your friends about some matters, the rent a friend event allows students to ‘rent’ someone to talk to for a particular amount of time, and in the case of younger years, they can ask for friendship or academic advice from a more experienced and knowledgeable person. The rent a friend event was fun: people interacted with each other, and took a break from schoolwork, which can sometimes be overwhelming. More on this here.

The Log Cabin

On September 23rd both the junior and senior school students came in wearing sportswear to help raise money for The Log Cabin in Northfields. Our 30 strong parent-staff team also ran the Ealing Half Marathon for The Log Cabin. So far we have raised over £3,000 and we are leaving our fundraising page open here until after half term if you would like to donate to this fantastic cause. Thank you for your generosity.

Uganda Sports Collection

The PE department and charities collaborated to collect used sports wear and netballs to donate to various schools, clubs and academies in Uganda. This is being done in partnership with the Ugandan Netball Team, The She Cranes. We managed to collect just over 40 netballs and 5kg of sports wear to donate, which was taken back to Uganda by The She Cranes on the 10th October. Thank you to the students in Mrs Alonso’s Tuesday enrichment group for raising the money to send off the netballs through a popular bake sale.

Stationery Collection for Serving our Superheroes

This week we held a stationery collection for the local charity Serving our Superheroes who seek to support anyone in West London who are in need. Many teenage Ukraine refugees are continuing to settle in the west London area but when starting school, they often have no equipment or stationery.

Care 4 Calais Autumn Visit

A group of Year 10 & 11 students spent the afternoon at the hostel that is supported by Care 4 Calais in Hayes. The children at the hostel were very pleased to see us again when we arrived and remembered some of the group from previous visits. Thankfully the rain held off allowing games of football, ‘What’s the time Mr wolf?,’ Grandmother’s footsteps, the newspaper game and back by popular demand, the water race. It was a wonderful afternoon, spending time with the children again and engaging in various activities. We hope to visit again at the end of the term to hold a Christmas party.

Macmillan Coffee Morning

Over £300 was raised from our staff Macmillan coffee morning from an amazing array of homemade cakes including lemon cupcakes, banana and chocolate sourdough muffins, pineapple upside down cake, rock road, chocolate and orange shortbread and orange drizzle loaf!

Care Squares

This year Mrs Duns would like to encourage everyone to knit blanket squares to be added to blankets which will be donated to homeless individuals who are being supported by Ealing Soup kitchen and the 240 Project based near Latimer Road. Please get in touch if you would like to get knitting!