Charities

THANK YOU!

The successful non-uniform days and excellent music recitals in the Girls’ Division have raised over £3000 for charities such as: Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, Derian House, Speakeasy, Friends of Oliver and St John Ambulance. Each charity has been suggested and selected by students and their charity representatives. This has given every student a say as to where they would like to send their charity money.

The Autumn Term was particular busy with £4540 collected through the annual Year 9 Children in Need week, Year 10’s Christmas Post extravaganza, in aid of Contact the Elderly, and of course the entertaining Prefects’ Pantomime, for Motor Neurone Disease Association. Three pupils were invited to Key 103 to be interviewed after the Year 7 Sponsored Silence raised a fantastic £2300 for the Mission Christmas campaign.

October 2014 saw the third Sixth Form trip to SKCV, an orphanage for street kids in India. It was a life changing experience for the students and staff who attended. They made new friends and gained insight into how the £2400 of charity money they helped raise is spent to help the orphaned children. In February, there were tears during a very moving assembly given by Kathryn Kay, founder of Phelan McDermid Syndrome UK, about her son Charlie, who suffers with the rare genetic disorder. As a result, £280 was raised for the charity through a pancake café and a pancake obstacle course that ended with an entertaining victory for the Deputy Head girls. Narrowly beating a highly competitive Science Staff and another team made of various teachers from differing subjects.

In March, girls ‘cooed’ over Peanut, during a Guide Dog assembly which introduced the first picture of the third dog to be sponsored by Girls Division.

Every member of the Girls’ Division deserves a big thank you for all their help in raising more than £13,000 for a wide variety of local and international charities. It is a magnificent effort, well done!

Star Awards!

The Sixth Form has raised an impressive £550 for Speakeasy, a local charity helping individuals with aphasia. This was done through cake sales, a Henna design stall and the Staff baby photo competition. Students also had the opportunity to buy a ticket to a talk about careers in fashion and design by Henry Holland, the proceeds of which went to the charity. Despite exams, fundraising continued in the Summer Term with Years 10 and 7 raising money for the Nepal earthquake disaster.

The Year 12 girls at Bolton School have volunteered over 5000 hours of their time this year, reading with younger pupils in the Junior Schools or at local secondary schools, assisting at hospices and care homes, and getting involved with Tea at the Riley, monthly tea parties for the older generation. Alongside the boys, our school won the vInspired National Award as “Star Awards Provider” in April, ranked top in the country with the highest proportion of students registering their volunteering hours and achieving awards at 50 or 100 hours of voluntary work. The school has been offered a £1000 grant, designed to help students develop new or existing skills, or to support their progression into further volunteering, training or education. Alex Hopkinson said: “I loved all the different volunteering opportunities; I could be interested in a wide variety things and I was given so many options.” Emma Rayner agreed, saying: “I thought the range of volunteering opportunities in School has been great this year, particularly the chance to help talented young people with fewer opportunities than ourselves. Also the push to do volunteering outside of School is great for gaining independence and also helps those outside the School community.” Tayyibah Khalid summed up many pupils’ vInspired community action experience: “This is the first year I’ve started volunteering and I’ve really enjoyed it! Giving back to the local community has been a very rewarding experience.”

Tea at the Riley: Old and Young share afternoon tea!

Tea at the Riley has gone from strength to strength this year, with guest numbers up to 45 for the monthly afternoon tea for the older generation in our local community. The most recent event was hosted by a group of year 8 pupils who baked, designed table settings and hosted the guests. There was also live musical entertainment as Lucy Stiles, Tiggy Blackwell, Sally Cowling and Emily Rajbhandari demonstrated their aptitude in solo pieces.

This morning I really enjoyed making lemon biscuits with Lydia. The group made a variety of different delicacies such as rainbow meringues, chocolate orange fudge squares, treacle cake and Bakewell tartlets. We were happy to be part of the group as we really enjoyed the day. We had three people sitting at our table, Connie, Ken and Phyllis – they all enjoyed the food and were impressed that we had made such difficult things and wanted to know the recipe! Lizzie Crowther I really enjoyed hosting “Tea at the Riley” today as it was fun and involved teamwork. First of all, my group and I baked summer fruit bowl tartlets, which I had never baked before so it was good having a challenge. After baking them, I was very pleased as they looked really tasty and I think that I am going to try the recipe at home.

Imane Nagi On our table were three ladies who said they met at the previous “Tea At The Riley.” They told us about their past and showed us pictures of them at Bolton School back in 1941. Me and my team served them drinks, sandwiches and cakes whilst keeping up the friendly conversation. Yolanda Hughes