We organise a series of drives for much-needed books, clothes and, more recently, laptops and Chromebooks for our partners.
Books
We donated 4,500 new and gently used books to our partner schools before Christmas 2020. Many children in our partner schools have few, if any, books at home. Book ownership has been directly linked with improved mental health amongst children and a greater propensity to read for pleasure, while reading fluency itself has a significant impact on children’s successful progression through education (Children’s Book Project).
Our book drive is now an annual event. If you have books that you are keen to donate that meet our criteria, please drop them off at the security gate at Emanuel School.
Clothes
Similarly, we organise drives for coats, hats, scarves, shoes, sleeping bags and other essentials for our homeless charity partners, Spires and Ace of Clubs. We organise these once a term as requested by our partners. These are advertised through a variety of channels including The Emanuel Edit. Emanuel volunteers collect and sort the donations and we deliver them to our partners.
Technology
During the recent school closures, many of our partner school struggled to provide equipment to enable pupils to access online learning. Through the generosity of our parents and community, we were able to provide 250 devices to our partner schools. As Emanuel’s equipment is updated, we ensure that devices in good working order are offered to our partners too.
The demand is still great for laptops and Chromebooks and will continue to be so as more schools incorporate an online component to learning. We are always looking for working equipment which we can rehome. If you or your company is in the process of upgrading equipment, please consider working with us to donate to our partner schools. It makes a huge difference.