(This blog is taken from a recent presentation given by the Head of Charities, Felicity, and the Heads of each Company – Marina, Beth, Yazmin, Sassie and Millie). As Head of Charities I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know more about the different charities that our school supports. For those of you who don’t know, each year the Companies select a different charity to raise money for. In addition, the school also supports a number of other charities such as Plan International.
Plan is a global charity which works with children in the world’s poorest countries to help build a better future for them. They do this through many ways, including giving children a healthy start in life, such as access to safe drinking water, securing the education of girls and boys, working with communities to prepare for and survive disasters, inspiring children to take a lead in decisions that affect their lives and enabling families to earn a living and plan for their children’s future. One of their recent campaigns, Because I Am A Girl, aims to free girls from violence and ensure they receive the education, skills and support they need to become powerful forces for change in their communities. The campaign has already helped over 58 million girls and aims to support hundreds of millions more this year. Last year the school raised money for this campaign through the participation of the LIV and MIV in the World Wide Walk.
Here’s some information about the different charities that the Companies are supporting this year:
Osmund’s chosen charity is Samara’s Aid Appeal. Samara’s Aid Appeal is a self-funded appeal operating under the auspices of Feed the Hungry. Their aid goes to people in need of humanitarian relief that other aid agencies have missed, or people who are scattered across areas where they cannot access help themselves. The aid they send is taken to people in need in war-stricken areas of Syria and Iraq and their aim is to demonstrate the unconditional love of God to people who are in desperate need. Everything that they donate is given freely to those in need with no expectations and no strings attached. Samara is a mum who, around Christmas in 2013, saw reports of Syrian refugee children in a snow-covered camp wearing flip flops and summer clothes and had nothing else to wear since they had fled their homes in the summer. This spurred her on and she started by sending out 2kg packages of donations at a time. This was very expensive and she couldn’t shake the idea of sending out lorries of packages. The initiative finally started in August 2014 with an email to Samara’s sons year group appealing for winter clothes and shoes to send to the people displaced in Iraq who lost everything when their towns, cities and villages were taken by the Islamic State group. It has quickly grown into a large humanitarian aid project and between October 2014 and Summer 2016 they have sent 46 lorries and containers, carrying clothes, shoes, bedding, toiletries, medical equipment, ambulances and school equipment. They have also opened a hospital in Syria and are working towards opening more. The ongoing aid appeals will be aiming to supply aid to Iraq and Syria, possibly with some going to Lebanon or Jordan. There are now storage hubs all around the UK where you can deliver your donations to be sent to these countries. Despite having so many donations, they still need money to transport the items to these countries and on average it costs £6,000 per lorry. They also need donations to be able to run their hospitals and build new ones due to the ever-increasing violence.
Ed Rich’s Charity is called the Charitable foundation for the Education of Nepalese Children (otherwise known as CFENC). Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. The charity works to help and improve the educational opportunities available to all children of all ages and backgrounds in Nepal. As we are so privileged to have such a brilliant education and so many opportunities here at Calne, Ed Rich are working with the charity to try and help them as much as possible. In the past, Calne have donated the old school uniform to the school in Nepal and continue to raise money for CFENC from school charity events. Within the UVI, this charity is especially personal to Sassie, Jess and Eve after taking part in the school trip to Nepal a couple of years ago, and now wanting to return to Nepal to continue doing the work that they were doing whilst out there. The school that the charity is helping at the moment is called the Namo Buddha Primary School and massive restorations have already taken place, with the improvement of the existing school buildings and trying to extend the facilities offered to the staff and the children attending the school. We look forward to seeing how we can continue to help all the children out there and hopefully give them better opportunities for their futures.
Poore’s charity this year is Stand Down, a charity based in Calne that aims to provide psychological help and support to any active serving member or veteran of the British Armed Forces who suffer mental trauma as a result of military service. They also aim to provide help and support to the family of those affected by psychiatric injury. This is an extract from an open letter by Alan, a military veteran suffering from mental trauma.
“I cannot thank you enough for the support I received from Stand Down. I had a mental breakdown and experienced a prolonged period of psychosis. Nothing I had experienced in my life or during 30 years in the military could prepare me for what was happening and I lost every shred of human hope. A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of Stand Down and I took the plunge. Up until that time I had refused to face the fact that I was mentally ill. I was quickly assigned a counsellor with whom I shared my most inner thoughts and together we began forming a recovery programme. I was initially doubtful that I would get better but as the weeks went by I slowly began to improve. Last week I laughed spontaneously a number of times, that’s good enough for me. Stand Down is a lifesaving charity – thank you” Alan
For Moberly’s charity we have decided to support the Wiltshire Air Ambulance. The Wiltshire Air Ambulance was established in March 1900 as a joint venture between the Wiltshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust and the Wiltshire Police. Back then, the charity needed £700,000 a year to keep Wiltshire’s air ambulance in the skies and in January 2015 they started operating a dedicated air ambulance which means they must now raise £3.25m a year. They rely entirely on public donations to keep them flying and do not receive any central government funding. The Wiltshire Air Ambulance is an invaluable charity and one that has been used numerous times by St Mary’s. This year alone they have flown 526 missions to save the lives of those in Wiltshire and surrounding counties. Moberly believe that the continuation of their service is fundamental to the people of Wiltshire and so this is why we have chosen to support the Wiltshire Air Ambulance.
Grosstete have chosen to support the World Land Trust charity; an international conservation charity, which protects the world’s most biologically important and threatened habitats acre by acre. Since its foundation in 1989, WLT has funded partner organisations around the world to create reserves, and give permanent protection to habitats and wildlife. Its mission is:
• to protect and sustainably manage natural ecosystems of the world, with emphasis on threatened habitats and endangered species
• to develop partnerships with local individuals, communities and organisations
• to raise awareness of the need for conservation and generate support through education, information and fundraising – https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldLandTrust
For the first time this year we are linking our Company Shout to Global’s Make Some Noise Campaign. This campaign supports specially selected projects up and down the country, which deliver life-changing work to youngsters and their families living with illness, disability or lack of opportunity. Here is a short video showing some of the projects that they support. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKxQ2Nqig3c
