It’s been a busy term for our Service teams with a variety of activities to assist a range of organisations and charities.
This half-term saw our inaugural welly throwing competition raised enough funds to buy 15 new pairs of wellies to encourage outdoors education in local primary schools. Well done to our section winners: Kanishq Hari (Year 8), Thomas Flan (Year 10), Will Cough-Cooper (Lower Sixth) and Mr Jarvis who threw a huge 28m. In support of this, our Technology service team have created new wooden welly racks to house the new boots and a Year 11 team interested in the power of outdoors education for students’ well-being led a collection of winter warmer items, with nearly 100 pairs of gloves, 30 scarves and over 60 woolly hats collected, alongside lots of warm coats.
Our annual Christmas collections were extremely well backed, with a huge number of thoughtful packages made up by tutor groups, reaching nearly 80 at the last count. It was wonderful to see students adding thoughtful items such as their favourite DVDs, colouring pens, books and cards, with the Local Action team adding personalised labels. These donations will be taken to meet requests from 12 local primary schools, with other items going to support the work of One Big Family: Helping the Homeless in Medway who support people in temporary accommodation as well as those who are homeless. The Green Team have also been exploring the impact of using cleaned recycled crisp packets to created bivvy bags to support homeless people in cold weather, as part of the Crisp Packet Project.
Finally, Payton, Anna and Phoebe in Year 11, together with the school-wide Charity Committee, led a non-uniform day in support of Stem4 who promote positive health in teenagers. They produced a brilliant video shown in assemblies which explained the impact of the funding and asked students and staff across the school to share their tips for well-being. The Charity Committee are also running a Christmas jumper day to finish the year, with funds raised going to the NHS staff well-being at Tunbridge Wells towards a new shower unit. Our students have been so determined to think of ways to support the wider community, whilst also helping those within our own community.
