We have an active community and partnership programme that involves pupils, staff, parents and the wider
community. We are delighted to share some of the highlights of our activities so far this term.
Christmas hampers – Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
‘We are so grateful to Emanuel School for providing so many generous hampers for our single mums. CHEER stands for Comfort, Hope, Empathy, Encouragement and Rebuilding. This is what these hampers do for our vulnerable families at Christmas time. We couldn’t support these families in this way without you.’ Lucinda Martin-Thomas, CHEER hamper coordinator and past Emanuel School parent.
Our lower and middle school pupils put together an astounding 76 hampers for local single parent families in our community. Co-ordinated by our partner, CHEER, the hampers were delivered directly to the recipients this week.
As always, our Emanuel families’ generosity is extraordinary – each assigned family received wrapped personally chosen age-appropriate gifts for the children and parent as well as delicious Christmas treats and decorations. Pupils from Emanuel school have provided Christmas hampers to over 400 families in our local area over the past 7 years.
Celebrating the power of partnerships – Partnership Week 2023
The Independent School Council’s 2023 Celebrating Partnerships booklet was published on 27 November to mark the start of Partnership week. The booklet showcases the incredible partnership work taking place between state and independent schools and highlights the transformative impact of these collaborations.
We are delighted to be included in the booklet again this year for our Ukrainian Coffee and Conversation Hub. Many of you were involved in making this happen. Working together makes things possible – we couldn’t have done this without you. The same is true for all of our partnership activities. If you are an avid follower of social media, you will have seen our daily posts highlighting our partnership activities including Ascent, our summer Year 5 academic support programme; Primary Ambitions, our Lower sixth-led enrichment programme for Year 6 pupils; our Ukrainian Coffee and Conversation Hub; our partnership with Fulham FC Foundation including the EmpowHER initiative; and the partner school university interview programme we ran recently.
We are proud to be working in partnership with the state schools in our local community to widen inclusion and opportunity, raise aspirations and increase attainment..
Literary delights at the 2023 CWIZZ
On 16th November, we hosted ‘The CWIZZ’, the annual book quiz competition organised by a collective of south London authors (CWISL) whose passion is to promote reading. The Hampden Hall was buzzing with 35 teams including 14 from our partner primary schools.
This is the third year our partner schools have participated in the competition. The CWIZZ provides a fabulous opportunity for children to hear the authors first hand, read extracts from their novels; test their literary knowledge through a series of fun, but challenging rounds; and to win a generous collection of raffle prizes! Although none of our partner schools placed this year, several won CWISL author assembly visits which is fantastic. Each partner school was also given a goody bag of the authors’ books for their school library. We can’t wait for next year!
Emanuel’s home grown Macmillan Coffee morning
On 10 November, our Charity and Community Partnership and Outreach Prefects, Coleman, Atitiya, Tiewo and Katherine, organised a coffee morning that extended through to lunchtime in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. Demonstrating their entrepreneurial skills, they moved their stand from the Buttery to be close to their customers! Positioned next to the lunch queue, they sold their tasty hot chocolate, lemon drizzle cake and chocolate brownies raising over £260 for Macmillan. It was all planned and executed with aplomb – what a fabulous effort!
Opportunities to get involved
Volunteer at our Book Drive sorting session – Wednesday, 24th January
Join us to unpack and sort donated books for our partner schools. It’s a great opportunity to meet other parents and support our community partners. We will be sorting the books from 9.30am – 11.30am and again from 1.00pm – 3.00pm in the Hampden Hall. They will be collected by the Children’s Book Project for distribution to our partner schools on Wednesday too.
Chance to inspire – speakers wanted for our EmpowHER programme
As part of our EmpowHER programme – a joint initiative with Fulham FC Foundation designed to inspire and empower girls and young women through sport – we are planning to have a number of inspirational speakers address the girls. Ideally our speakers will share their journey from school to where they are now including all of the bumps and bends on the way. Our aim is to motivate girls to stay in school, inspire them to explore new pathways they might not have considered and to communicate a sense that all is possible!
Sessions run at our Off-Site Sports Ground, Blagdons, on Thursday evenings. We would ideally like you to speak for 15 to 20 minutes with some time for Q&A. This can be pitch side but better yet could be indoors if you would like to show slides or share any materials. It is all very flexible. If this is something you would consider, we are keen to hear from you.
For more information on our community partnership and outreach activities, and to volunteer for any of the initiatives or offer financial support, please contact Mrs Irwin, Head of Community Partnerships and Outreach at Lisa.irwin@emanuel.org.uk