Our Pastoral Lead, Andy Marshall, has worked hard to build partnerships with our local community as well as companies further away. This has already helped to promote our school and its aims to others and has giving our young people further opportunities to improve their personal development.
As part of this, we participated in a Charity Car Wash involving five children and school staff as well as staff from the McDonald’s fast food chain at Eastfield, which is situated near to our school.
The purpose of this event was to both support children in hospital as one of Ronald McDonald’s House Charities and to provide an opportunity for our children to embrace their community in this act of good citizenship.
The tasks involved giving our students the opportunity to use good communication skills in talking to the public by introducing themselves and making the public aware of what the event was about and who they were representing. Students encouraged the public to have their cars washed manually and to donate to the charity.
The event took place from 10am to 11.30am and the students raised £78.06 for the charity by cleaning ten cars. The public were enthusiastic asking questions about our school and they welcomed how polite and sociable our young people were with them and the spirit in which it was delivered.
The McDonalds restaurant kindly gave each student a free meal for their fantastic efforts in helping them raise money for their charity and we received this lovley letter from the charity to thank us all for our fundraising efforts.
The students will individually achieve 1 credit for their participation in this event and once 3 credits have been gained, individual students will be able to choose free activities from our local business partners who have signed up to our Good Citizen Scheme. Another partnership we are currently setting up is with Middlesbrough Football Club where students can have the opportunity to look round the ground and watch a football match.
The students thoroughly enjoyed this activity and they are looking forward to see what they can participate in next. Apart from developing their social skills, taking part in the Good Citizenship Scheme will also be beneficial to include on their CV for college and employment.