Volunteering and Outreach
Prep School fundraising: Honeypot Children's Charity and Royal British Legion
Prep pupils have been able to contribute £750 for the wonderful Honeypot Children's Charity. This charity was chosen as it works with young people the same age as our Prep School pupils, by supporting young carers in the local area.
This fund raising was achieved by end of term non-uniform day contributions and via the Carol service Retiring Collection.
Pre-Prep children have also brought in presents for The Honeypot Children's Charity. Everyone has gone above and beyond to find lovely presents to help make these young carers' Christmas extra special. The pupils decorated Christmas boxes and helped fill them with all the presents.
In addition, nearly £300 was rasied for the Royal British Legion, via selling of poppies and British Legion stationery.
YungMash Charity Fundraising Gala Dinner
Ibstock Place hosted a major gala dinner on behalf of YungMash Collective, a charity set-up by a former head girl and which works to provide peer mentoring for young people globally. We sought help raise funds for the charity, YungMash Collective. The YungMash Collective was set-up by Masha Shishkina, our Head Girl (2017-18). It provides peer mentoring opportunities for young people across the world, informed by the latest neuroscience. Masha's parents approached the School last year as they sought to grow the charity after Masha passed away in March 22. The School agreed to host a major charity gala evening to raise funds for the Collective.
The School gave free use of its facilities - including our Ballroom and our Refectory, as well as the services of our catering and maintenance teams. Our pupils provided some musical entertainment for the evening.
Social Walks with Group for Visually Impaired people (MSSC)
Our pupils acted as sighted guides for visually impaired members of the local charity Merton Sport and Social Club. This group organises sporting and outdoor activities for its sighted and non-sighted members. Our pupils' involvement allowed visually impaired members to take part in a short, sunny walk in Richmond Park. An added bonus was, as our pupils were doing the guiding, the guide dogs could come off duty and scamper around to their hearts' content.
Our pupils were confident and sociable guides, having been given a brief training session by MSSC leader Terry James. The walk was enjoyed by all, and will be repeated monthly.
This activity allowed our pupils to become more aware of the needs of visually impaired people and more confident in interacting them. Their sunny and sociable natures were vital in making the afternoon a fun and intersting walk. More importantly, their guiding made it much easier for the partially sighted guests to be involved in the walk, and enjoy a relaxed afternoon in the outdoors.
Volunteering at Roehampton Library
IPS pupils supported the Summer Reading Challenge at the local community library, during the Summer holidays. This involved creating displays, enrolling new children to the Challenge and awarding prizes on completion. the project aimed to improve literacy amongst local children in an area where there is a large number of EAL families, to increase engagement with books and the local library, to encourage families to read together and build confidence, to develop a better understanding of the local community for our pupils and foster a sense of civic duty.
Fundraising for Momentum
As a consequence of a series of charitable events, we raised £6312 and were able to pass this amount onto Momentum. Momentum has been our school's adopted charity for several years. Pupils throughout the school, from Reception to our Upper Sixth Form, were involved - close, then, to 1000. We hope to beat last year's amount next year.
Student Volunteering and Outreach programme
As was the case last year, all pupils studying 3 A level subjects are now required to take part in a weekly activity with one of our partners. All projects will last the whole academic year, and the pupils are currently very excited to get started. These projects are designed to promote skills in empathy, teamwork, responsibility and commutation in our pupils. They will also be providing valuable work for our community partners. For each of the days the projects happen (Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri), there is an Ibstock teacher timetabled to be available for the afternoon. Their role is to communicate with partners, and visit the site to ensure all is going well with the activities.
Activities include:
- Supporting an extra-curricular sports club or providing in-lesson support at The Alton Primary School.
- Over 60s club.
- Working with pupils are the Minerva Centre, Linden Lodge school for children with visual impairments. This includes: running enrichment groups, eg. music, Spanish speaking, and science with pupils year 9-13.
- Supporting reading at Mosaic Jewish Primary School. Including: supporting the curriculum; and running after-school Drama club and School Newspaper.
- Maintaining gardens in local sheltered housing.
- Making toys for donation to children's groups on The Alton Estate.
- Alton School: Supporting extra-curricular sports clubs, running a book club, helping with curriculum support nursery - Year 6.
- Sheen Mount School: supporting curriculum for students in years 1-3.
During COVID, volunteering options included:
- Virtual tutoring/social engagement with one of 3 partner schools;
- Contributing to a local "scrub hub" making scrubs for NHS hospitals;
- Making over a neglected outdoor area at a local children's activity centre;
- A weekly litter-picking run, allied to the wonderful work of the charity Plogolution.