CHARITY & FUNDRAISING

There have been numerous charity events that our pupils, parents and staff have supported so generously throughout the school year, including Macmillan Cancer Research, North Devon Foodbank, Red Nose Day, Children in Need, Devon Hospice and Edukid.

The first fundraiser of the year was the Macmillan Coffee Morning. It’s been quite a while since we ran one of these so it was a more low key event this year due to Covid restrictions still being in place. Despite not being able to welcome the wider Shebbear College community to join us, it was nice to see so many donations of cakes for the pupils to enjoy and we raised £307.17.

The Chaplain led a collection for a local food bank as part of the Harvest Festival this year. We were very impressed with the amount of food and other items donated, which totalled 30 bags full! These were taken to the Bideford food bank.

Our school Librarian, Mrs Fanet, ran the Readathon event in October. She was very impressed with the enthusiasm of those that got involved and there were some big amounts raised by individuals - all for reading books! The total money raised for this worthwhile charity was £511.80.

We also took part in Movember again this year, a charity which we have supported historically and an excellent way to raise money and awareness of men’s mental and physical health. Connor and Alex in Upper 6, along with Mr Chandler and Mr Quance grew a moustache for the month so a huge well done to them and we also set up a Movember photo booth for pupils and staff to pose for a ‘Mo’ photo, raising a total of £233.90.

Covid, once again, put paid to our Children in Need Mufti day in November but thanks to the generosity of parents and staff we still managed to raise an amazing amount - £632.40.

As always, on the last day of the Michaelmas term, pupils are invited to wear their Christmas jumpers to raise money for Save the Children. We saw a huge variety of different styles and raised £75.40.

The children in our G2L (Global to Local) group put in a tremendous amount of work each year to help support the education of two children, Lucky Peace and Isaac, at Loch Koma Primary School in Gulu, Uganda. There have been many events which have helped raise valuable funds for Edukid, which is a wonderful achievement. This year, Tyler, Ben and Harry met with Senior School pupils as part of the whole school G2L group and coordinated the cookies and hot chocolate sale in February, raising £196.80. The Prep School has also continued to help Edukid by writing some of the primary school resources on the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, which are linked to the real life stories of Lucky Peace and Isaac.

We joined the rest of the country in March when we held a fundraiser for those affected by the war in Ukraine. We suggested a mufti theme of blue and yellow in order to show our support and through some very generous donations from staff, pupils and parents we raised an incredible £771.40! A Bags 2 School collection is always popular with parents; it gives the chance to have a clear out of old, unwanted clothes whilst raising money for charity and this year was no exception. Thanks to you all for having a Spring clean and helping raise £84 for the local charity Jay’s Aim.

As we hadn’t been able to hold our big fundraiser for Children in Need earlier in the year, we decided to go all out for our Comic Relief fundraiser instead. Each house was asked to come up with ideas for stalls so that we could run a mini fete in and around the quad. Luckily, we were blessed with lovely weather so the event was held outside. There were some fabulous stalls, showing real creativity and all the pupils got involved. We even had the return of the very popular staff stocks which helped raise over £200 on its own. This was a lovely event, enjoyed by all, and raised a fantastic £683.89. Infact, it was such a success that it encouraged us to hold another fete, just on a bigger scale.

Our Head of School, Bella Richards, took part in a skydive in April to raise money for Devon Mind. In order to show our support for her courage and fundraising efforts, we decided it was time to run our Spring Fete once again raising money for this fantastic local charity. This whole school event saw pupils running traditional fete stalls and enabled us to welcome our wider school community on site to join us. It was lovely to see so many family members and there was a real buzz. It was also fantastic to have the dog show back in action. This is a firm favourite and is always very popular. My thanks go to Mrs Reed & Mrs Sibcy for taking the unenviable position as chief organisers and judges - they both did a tremendous job. Thanks also to The Friends for running the refreshment stall. This event raised a fantastic £749.50 for Devon Mind.

In the Trinity term, as part of the Prep children’s PSHE lessons, two additional charities were chosen: Children’s Cancer research UK and North Devon Animal Ambulance, after Prep 5 and 6 worked on ideas to support a variety of charities and then pitched these to the Prep School. I must also mention Flora in Prep 5 who cut her long hair into a very trendy short style and donated it to The Little Princess Trust.

Thank you to everyone for contributing so much to such a valuable element of our school community.

Mrs Lovett