Harvest Collection Brings in Over 1,000kg of Food for Ealing Foodbank
By Mrs Johnson, Charities Co-ordinator
Firstly, thank you for your very generous donations to our annual Harvest Collection last week – we were delighted to send off 1091kg of food to the Ealing Foodbank. Prizes were awarded to the form group who collect the most amount of food and for the best decorated hamper – well done to both 8E and 8S (most food collected) and 8N & 7E (for the best decorations)!
On October 5th our Sixth Form Charities Reps Sophie and Niamh arranged a fancy dress day and bake sale for the charity Meningitis Now, which coincided with national Meningitis Awareness Day. All the Sixth Form were encouraged to dress up as movie characters, including the Sixth Form tutors!
Year 11 got their charities activities for The Felix Project off to a great start with a Dodgeball event last week and are lining up an intriguing “Rent a Friend” day on Friday. 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 event raised lots of money for the Felix Project, thank you to everyone who took part.
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. It was a new idea, but it worked very well!
Year 11’s first bake sale was also very successful with lots of creative and delicious baked products, so the Year group have raised £260 so far. One of the Year 11 students said, “The first bake sale went great we had 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, we enjoyed the bake sale and are looking forward to the next one!”
Our Staff raised just over £300 from a very popular Macmillan Coffee Morning last week with some fantastic home bakes on offer.
Following our collection for sportswear for Uganda, students also held a bake sale to raise money to post out the netballs and equipment that were donated.
Our Knitter Knatter Club have also made a great start to our Care Squares initiative for the 240 Project and the Ealing Soup Kitchen.
This week we are launching an appeal for Stationery for the charity Serving our Superheroes. We are asking for donations of pencils, pens, pencil cases, highlighters, coloured pens, rulers, calculators, notebooks, exercise books and colouring books. Stationery collected will be given to children in need in West London, including Ukrainian refugees.
Year 10 also kicked off their first volunteering sessions last week as part of the Year 10 enrichment programme. The weather has been kind to our groups so far at the Honey & Grape Farm at Horsenden Hill and helping out in Ealing parks! Our Care Home Choir went to Downhurst last week which proved popular with the residents – see this lovely tweet from a local GP who was at the Care Home at the time of our visit, with visits planned to Blakesley House and Chestnut Lodge this and next week respectively.