SCHOOL NEWS// CHARITY
C H A R IT Y
2018 -201 9
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:
This year a very big charity team has been working hard for
some very worthy causes. Our new team was welcomed with
the addition of Dr Andrews. The first fundraising event of the
school year was the Samaritan’s purse Christmas shoebox
appeal supported by the lower school. This was followed
closely by our Christmas jumper day in support of SASH UK,
a cause that we chose as heads of the charity committee that
helps prevent youth homelessness in York. With some fabulous
Christmas jumpers on show and with the help of the collection
from our end of term carol service, we certainly began our
fund-raising in style.
We then began planning for the big event… charity week!
The house charities selected for this year were: Dolman –
Surfers Against Sewage, Gruggen – York special baby care
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 what areas
their efforts would benefit. We felt fundraising for local,
national, international and environmental causes would be
most beneficial. The committee met weekly to plan fundraising
22
THE POCKLINGTONIAN
TOTAL RAISED
£4,088
events from record breaking attempts to auctioning off 6th
formers as magic themed butlers. Perhaps one of the most
popular events of the week was staff gunging, although it was
very hard to get staff on board!
With the help of the team, Easter eggs and staff gunging votes
were on sale every break and lunchtime in the run up to charity
week. Posters were made and put up around school (not on
the walls don’t worry Doc Mac!) to advertise events ranging
from 3-aside football against some very talented staff to the
annual event of giant musical chairs featuring some eighties to
noughties pop music.
During the week itself lower school and middle school fair
allowed each house to compete against each other in raising
the most money for their selected charity which involved stands
from cake stalls to human pig racing! During staff gunging we
assisted on top of the scaffolding with the best view of head
boy and head girl, Mr Perham and Mrs Wilson getting gunged
(and covered in beans – a new addition this year!). Then the
clean-up began which involved fishing beans out of buckets of
gunge and making the quad gunge free.
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. Overall the total for
the week came to £4088! A big thank you also to the music
department who raised a significant proportion of this through
the Alexandra Dariescu concert and the Spring Concert.
Other Charity events this year included a sunglasses day in aid
of RNIB and staff cycling the distance from York to London,