The spring term was a busy and successful one for all our charities and volunteering activities.

Spring Term Review

Comic Relief

Comic Relief was marked by the school community again this year. Students were encouraged to do something funny and wear red through a staff video in assembly put together by the charity reps. For the first time, red noses were on sale raising further money for Comic Relief. Well done to everyone who embraced the day by wearing red jumpers, red noses and headbands with over £200 raised for the charity!

Year 8 Fundraising for Girls Up

The second part of the spring term was the Year 8’s opportunity to raise funds for a charity of their choice. They chose Girls Up, which is a movement to advance girls skills, rights and opportunities to be leaders. Girls up is a girl-centred leadership development initiative, focusing on equity for girls and women in spaces where they are unheard and underrepresented. They operate a global network of regional affiliates impacting 270 000 girls and youth leaders in 150 countries, developing transformative leaders who advance gender justice worldwide. Over £200 was raised from the following events.

The bake sales were a huge success, with a massive variety of delicious treats such as brownies, flapjacks, cupcakes, cookies and cake pops! Thank you to all the students and staff who supported the sales. The Year 8s also organised an Easter Egg Hunt. Students had great fun running around the room to locate the hidden eggs. It was an exciting event and those who participated enjoyed it very much.

Collections

Ealing Foodbank Collection

Following the Year 10 enrichment visit to the Ealing Foodbank warehouse in June, a collection was held for many of the items foodbank often have in limited supply. Specialist milks, cereals and instant hot chocolate were all top of the list and it was great to be able to help boost their supplies. The Foodbank are always extremely grateful for the donations received from NHEHS. Another Year 10 group will have the opportunity to visit in the summer term and we will of course hold our annual collection of food at the harvest festival in October.

Easter Egg Collection for Care 4 Calais Children

Thank you to everyone who so generously donated to the Easter Egg collection for the children at the Care 4 Calais supported hotel in Hayes. Thankfully a large group of students were visiting the hotel to carry out activities with the children so there were many pairs of hands to help carry the bags of hundreds of eggs on the train. It was lovely to be able to share all the eggs with the children, they were very excited to receive them.

Neurodiversity Bake Sale

To celebrate Neurodiversity Week the Diversity Reps held a successful bake sale in order to raise money for the London Autism Group. This unique charity is based locally and seeks to serve the Autistic Community of London and surrounding Counties by promoting social inclusion of autistic people, advancing their mental and physical health, and well-being and promoting social awareness and acceptance of autism.

Volunteering

Care 4 Calais

Our latest trip to the C4C supported hotel in Hayes was attended by 18 students from Years 10-13. On the day of our visit, 18th March, Nowruz (new year) was being celebrated by the Iranian and other Middle Eastern communities. The children, as always, were pleased to see us and happily joined in with the Easter and Nowruz crafts, colouring and playdough. At the end of the session the children enjoyed collecting their Easter eggs which were so generously donated by so many students at NHEHS. Many tucked into their eggs straightaway! The children were also thrilled to be given soft toys which were donated by the parent’s guild following the Christmas fair.

North Ealing Primary School

In the last half term students at North Ealing have enjoyed working with NHEHS students on two separate occasions. During science week in March Y10 students visited Year 4 to teach students how Kaleidoscopes work and assisted the classes in making their own. Well done to the Y10 enrichment group for confidently delivering a lesson on the science behind kaleidoscopes and successfully ensuring each child was supported in completing their own to take home.

Year 5 students from North Ealing also visited NHEHS to have their first science lesson in a science lab. They were very excited to put on their lab coats and glasses and view onion skins under the microscopes. Thank you to Ms Brown for leading the lesson and to the Year 12s for assisting with escorting the classes to the labs.

Mencap fair 

Two Year 10 enrichment groups welcomed the customers of Mencap back into school in March. This time the theme was Easter and all crafts and activities were linked to this celebration. The customers enjoyed participating alongside the Year 10s. The Easter colouring and cards was clearly the favourite but friendship bracelets, playdough and an Easter egg hunt were also great hits. Thank you to the choir for returning in time to lead the group in enthusiastically singing the hits of ABBA.

Looking ahead to the summer term

Volunteering Day – 12th June 2024

We are very excited for our ‘whole school’ volunteering day coming up on Wednesday 12th June. Every year group from Junior School through to the Sixth Form will be involved in an array of activities throughout the whole day both here at school and in the local community.

If you are aware of any local organisations which might welcome our help or volunteering, please get in touch with Mrs Johnson.

Year 7 are busy planning their charities activities and will decide on their chosen year group charity this week. Meanwhile, the past week saw our Year 11 independent volunteers finish their volunteering, while new Year 10 community choirs have been formed and are busy practising their songs before they head out to our local care homes to perform in the coming weeks.

We are also hoping to arrange a possible Care 4 Calais visit in early May and run collections for the Days 4 Girls and Sanitation 4 Sisters charities.

Amnesty

Last term our Amnesty International Youth Group were busy raising awareness about the write for rights campaigns. These campaigns highlighted unheard activists across the world world, including Thulani Maskeo, killed in his own home in Eswatini whilst speaking out, and Ana Maria Santos Cruz in Brazil, a mother fighting for justice. Our group wrote letters of solidarity to activists and letters demanding immediate change to the Government or rulers of the countries where these atrocities took place.

This week the group ran a very popular teacher lip-syncing event at lunchtime to raise more money and awareness. The event brought in over £150 for Amnesty.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and generosity!