Volunteering

Volunteering to make a better world

Whether pupils are sporty, arty, musical or just want to help, Charterhouse is making an increasingly positive impact through its community volunteering projects – both at home and abroad

Two or three years ago, only a handful of pupils were undertaking any regular volunteering activity at Charterhouse. Fast forward to the year just passed and all First Year Specialists (over 200 pupils) and many of our Under School are actively involved in meaningful volunteering. We’re in the midst of a cultural shift as pupils begin to understand the value of giving to others and the benefits of a wider holistic approach to education.

All First Year Specialists take part in the Community Action Programme, meaning they’re either actively out in the community or doing some regular meaningful service on site. The partnerships arranged try to provide something for everyone. If they love the outdoors, they could do CCF or run the bronze Duke of Edinburgh programme. If they are musical, there a number of projects including a special partnership with Treloar School & College working with young people with complex disabilities. As the pupils there can’t play ‘conventional’ instruments, their orchestra instead plays through computers and quite advanced technology, and a group of Carthusians attends every Thursday to take part in their orchestra practice. It’s an amazing musical interaction.

Meanwhile, artistic pupils may like to partake in the ‘Arty Mornings’ in the summer. Last year, this brought together

Pupils from Broadwater attend events at Charterhouse

250 local primary school children from five schools, and it involved an African drumming workshop and story-telling workshop. Hopefully we can find something for everyone.

Role models

The Community Action Programme works closely with three local primary schools in regular partnerships and is making a real impact. At Godalming Junior School, we run our ‘Charterhouse Academy’, which is academic enrichment for their Year 6 pupils, readying themselves for secondary school. Activities involve modern languages, public speaking, debating and creative arts. Not only is it developmental for our pupils to be able to showcase and teach their talents, it also helps them to develop their leadership skills and offers the Junior School pupils valuable role models – individuals of 17 or 18 who are broad-minded and curious and are talking about life in senior schools, sixth form and going to university. It’s an inspirational and stimulating project for both sets of pupils.

The importance of role models cannot be overemphasised, and the increase in involvement of Charterhouse staff in these partnerships shows a real desire by the School to lead by example. Fourteen beaks lead the Community Action placements each week, but many more are involved in the programme more broadly, or in supervising internal Service Leadership activities that have similar aims. Ten staff are currently serving as governors of state or special schools in the area, and many others serve on prep school boards as well. We’re starting to

achieve a lot from the last three years of planning and activity, and our relationship with the local school Broadwater is a good example of the journey the School has been on.

Charterhouse and Broadwater

Last year’s Memorandum of Understanding, signed by Charterhouse’s Dr Alex Peterken and Broadwater’s Lizzi Matthews, cemented relations between two institutions which, between them, educate 1,300 children in the local area. This relationship has blossomed to the extent where state school Head Lizzi now kindly sits on our Governing Body.

The Raising Aspirations project launched by both schools has made a significant and measurable impact on the attendees at Broadwater. Fifteen academically exceptional Year 11s come to Charterhouse on a regular basis for academic enrichment. There’s a natural point of synergy as these pupils will be leaving their school soon and we can offer the opportunity to explore Sixth Form life and further study. The project was introduced in July 2019, when they first came here for an ‘Introduction to Boarding School Life’ talk. Since then we’ve held two further sessions providing an introduction to what their future might look like (run by our Higher Education & Careers team) and a shadowing experience.

Both schools are currently tracking the success of the partnership through anecdotes and feedback, plus also the government’s Progress 8 score. This is a new measure of school performance and is usually between -1 and +1. A score of +1 means that pupils in that school achieve one grade higher in each qualification than other similar pupils nationally. Broadwater’s Progress 8 score this year was 0.4 and this was the best result in the school’s history. But for those pupils on the Raising Aspirations programme the score was 1.25, meaning that those involved were all achieving 1.25 grades higher in every subject than they might have been expected to achieve. It shows that the efforts of both schools are having a measurable impact on those pupils’ lives. As the years progress, it is our hope that we can make a real difference in our community and beyond. b

Lydia makes a difference

For the second year running, a group of Carthusians visited a set of schools in South Africa, in conjunction with Mellon Educate. During the visit this year, a pupil noticed that the literacy hub in one of the schools was carpeted and painted whilst the other was still very dilapidated. The students asked the accompanying tutors why this was. Quite simply, the answer was Lydia Fernandez (g19). Now an OC, Lydia explains why she took it upon herself to fundraise to create a better space for the school:

“From a young age, I’ve wanted to be involved in charity work, especially aid abroad to make a tangible difference and improve someone’s quality of life. The South Africa trip in 2018 was the perfect opportunity for me to experience and learn more about the realities of aid work abroad. As soon as we left Cape Town airport we were confronted with the sight

of the Khayelitsha township. As socially aware as I initially liked to see myself, nothing prepared me for the scale of poverty in South Africa. For many this was our first look at real-life poverty, where 10 Rand (about 50p) is the difference between going hungry and not. I found the wealth disparity truly shocking, with the world-famous wine region of Stellenbosch only a 30-minute drive away, but a world away from Khayelitsha. “I found the wealth disparity truly shocking, with the world-famous wine region of Stellenbosch only a 30-minute drive away, but a world away from Khayelitsha”

It was an amazing experience to bond with the children of the township on a peer-to-peer basis. On returning to England, I was inspired by the work of Mellon Educate, so I raised money for a literacy area in one of their schools. I plan to raise more money for the charity so that they can continue to improve the facilities of their schools. After completing university, I hope to achieve my dream and work for a healthcare charity.”