STANDING WITH UKRAINE | PG 1

W A L K F O R U K R A I N E

Thank you to every single person who has thought of a fundraising idea, organised an activity, taken part, and/or given.

IN TOTAL WE HAVE RAISED

Yet again at BVGS, we have held a wide range of events for many great charities. This includes fundraising initiatives for some of the house charities like raffles, bake sales and an online quiz for Cancer Research UK, to other events like ping pong tournaments, a penalty shootout and even a dance off for Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

We have also supported different public campaigns this year like Comic Relief in March, the summary for which is below, and Children in Need in November for which we raised a grand total of over £5,000 from some inter-house football tournaments, which the students really enjoyed, and a sponsored silence which three Year 7 students from each house participated in, as well as other events.

Some individual students and teachers have also used their initiative to raise money for different charities like Women’s Aid, Young Minds, the Aston Hotel Project, OSCAR Birmingham and Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. More students are encouraged to do this as well if there is a cause they feel passionate about supporting. Just contact a member of the Charity Team or your Head of Year.

Back in December we continued the tradition of the Giving Tree which is a project in Gracechurch Centre that the students have been running each Christmas for three years now, even during the pandemic. The premise of it is that we ask some charities what donations they require around Christmas time, this year the charities were St Basils, St Giles, YMCA and the Buddy Bag Foundation, and then appeal to shoppers to purchase these items and return them to the tree whilst shopping. The project is a big one and there are students on the tree appealing for donations for the whole four week period that the tree is up but it’s all worth it and this year we received just over 1000 gifts for those less fortunate than us, including items ranging from clothes to toys to toiletries.

Finally, we've been fundraising for the UNHCR in support of refugees displaced and suffering due to the crisis in Ukraine. Above you can read about all the work that the UNHCR do and why it’s such a good cause to support. As you can see from the list above there was a huge range of events going on, some organised by the Charity Team and others by determined form groups, students and teachers. Just being around school on the Friday of the 'Walk with Ukraine' was a great experience with a buzz in the air seeing people walking around in their blue and yellow outfits and sprayed hair going from event to event, such as the Mario Kart tournaments or seeing Mr Doughty getting his head shaved.

Of course, the main event of the day was the 'Walk For Ukraine' . Organised by the Charity team led by Ms Dille and Liam McGrade, all the students from Years 7-10, and also those in Year 12 collectively walked the 2260km distance from Birmingham to Kyiv on the pavilion in their period 5 lesson on Friday 25th March. The students got sponsored for this and the total raised including online fundraising and in school donations from this and the other events is £9,335.99. I want to say a huge well done and thank you to everyone who helped us reach this amount and hope everyone enjoyed the day.

Overall, there has been huge success this year so far in charity and everyone has been so generous in getting involved in the events and giving up their time to run and organise them. The total for the year so far is over £15,000 raised for various causes which is a huge amount to have raised with a whole term left, so before the end of the year hopefully we can raise much more and do a lot more good.