Volunteers revamp school

THIS week 30 volunteers from M&S Meadowhall joined Stocksbridge Junior School to help reinvigorate their indoor and outdoor learning spaces by clearing rooms, painting and decorating, as well as digging, weeding and planting flowers and vegetable beds.

Stocksbridge Junior School works to enrich the lives of pupils in the local community in Sheffield by creating a diverse learning environment and mixing traditional lessons with alternative learning sessions to build on the children’s life skills. The school has been an integral part of the community for 56 years and has hosted everything from summer fêtes to festive fayres.

Stocksbridge Junior School reached out to M&S Meadowhall for support from their team as they needed funding and volunteers to renovate the garden and school bungalow so it can be better used for extracurricular learning, breakfast clubs and after school clubs.

The M&S volunteer team rolled up their sleeves and got to work with landscaping the outdoor space and decorating the indoor learning areas. After they had completed the project, the children excitedly explored their new learning spaces and were very happy with the outcome.

The volunteers were 30 of 5,000 colleagues from more than 600 M&S stores across the UK, who took part in a week-long volunteering drive, committing over 40,000 hours to projects that work tirelessly to improve the lives of children, young people and families across the UK.

The projects selected all help young people as a group that M&S and its customers feels passionate about supporting. As well as Stocksbridge Junior School, M&S is working with 400 organisations including schools, food banks, youth clubs and education charities to create positive outcomes for thousands of young people across the UK.

eas. Volunteering makes a profound difference to communities, and we believe that lots of small actions from lots of people creates a lasting impact to initiatives that do so much good for young people in Sheffield”.

Dave Cater, Plan A Community Champion at M&S Meadowhall said: “We’re really proud to be coming together as a team to support Stocksbridge Junior School. At M&S Meadowhall we care passionately about supporting young people in our community. The education of young people is something we know our customers care about too and we were really pleased to be able to get stuck into decorating their learning ar-

Sophie Hicks, School Business Manager at Stocksbridge Junior School said: “It’s been fantastic to have the support of M&S Meadowhall on this project, the funding and manpower combined has made a huge difference to what we’ve been able to achieve. The outdoor space looks fantastic and I’m so pleased that the bungalow we renovated last year is now a vibrant and homely space for us to host after school activities and breakfast clubs for the children – it’s like home from home. I can’t thank the team enough for the support they’ve given us”.