Pupils raised £4088.62 for local, national and international causes in a Charity Week full of magic-themed, wacky activities orchestrated by the Sixth Form-led Charity Committee. The Committee, together with the support of Mrs Helen Alexander (I/C Charities) and Dr Helen Andrews, Chemistry Teacher and a new member to the charity team at Pocklington School, began their fundraising back in the Michaelmas term. In the following report, the Heads of the Charity Committee provide a summary of their fundraising activities this year:
“After welcoming Dr Andrews to the Charity Committee in September, work got underway to organise the first fundraising event of the school year in Lower School, which was the Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Appeal, run by Samaritan’s Purse UK. This was followed closely by a Christmas Jumper Day in support of SASH UK, a cause that the Heads of the Charity Committee chose, that helps prevent youth homelessness in York and the North East. With some fabulous Christmas jumpers on show and with the help of the collection from the end of term carol service, we certainly began our fundraising in style!
On return from the Christmas break, we began planning for our biggest charity event - Charity Week - which took place in March. Each school house nominated an individual charity to support: Dolman – Surfers Against Sewage; Gruggen – York Special Care Baby Unit; Hutton – International Cancer Research and Wilberforce – RNIB. Each house had an assembly from a representative of their charity to allow students to gain an awareness of how the proceeds from their fundraising efforts would be used to help make a difference.
The committee met weekly to plan a myriad of fundraising events which varied from record breaking attempts, a giant musical chairs competition, to a butler auction, in which the younger pupils placed bids to “purchase” a “magical Sixth Form butler” for the day! Perhaps one of the most popular events of the week was staff gunging – surprisingly, it was very hard to get staff on board! The Heads of Charity Committee were in full attendance for this event, to witness Head Boy and Head Girl, and teachers Mr Perham and Mrs Wilson, getting gunged (and covered in beans – a new addition this year!) and then to assist in the team effort to clean up afterwards!
During Charity Week, Lower and Middle School Fairs allowed each house to compete against each other to raise the most money for their selected charity which involved stands from cake stalls to human pig racing! Another new addition to the week was the selling of pizzas which on the first day sold out in an astonishing 7 minutes!
We had the best time running the week with the help of the whole Committee and the school community. We are delighted with the final fundraising total for the week and extend a huge thank you to the Music Department who raised a significant proportion of this through the Alexandra Dariescu Concert and the Spring Concert.
With the summer term ahead there are still a few charity events to come, including a Sunglasses Day in aid of RNIB and the staff will also be attempting to ‘cycle’ the distance from York to London over a morning and will be asking for donations from everyone’s “copper collection” to raise even more money.
We have massively enjoyed our time as Heads of Charity Committee and we wish whoever takes on the role next year the best of luck and hope they have as much fun as we have had in raising money for some great causes. Thanks once again to Mrs Alexander and Dr Andrews for all their support and hard work – we couldn’t have done it without you.”
Please click here to view photographs from this year's Charity Week.