Service in Action
At Earley St Peter's one of our school values is Service. We strive to instil pupils with an awareness of injustice within their local community and the wider world and to demonstrate that everyone can be an agent of change, particularly when we work together to help others.
Our hope is to grow communities of people who have the courage to, ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’. Within schools, the act of identifying injustice and taking action to address it is referred to Courageous Advocacy.
Below are some examples of Courageous Advocacy in Action at Earley St Peter's.
Harvest Donations
One of our school values is Service and an excellent example of this is the kind donations from parents and carers for Harvest Festival this year which was lead by Year 3 pupils. We would like to thank all the families that donated the food items which were given to Churches in Reading Drop in Centre this week. As a sign of their gratitude, we received a letter thanking the school community.
It is important for pupils to see first hand the impact that serving others can have and how even a small act of kindness, such as donating an item of food, can have a big impact when communities work together to support one-another.
Please see below a message from CIRDIC.
"All at CIRDIC would like to say a heartfelt thank you to you all for your kind and generous harvest donations. We depend enormously upon the generosity of organisations in the Reading area and are very grateful for your support. CIRDIC continues to serve some of the least privileged of our community. Thank you for helping us to continue our work."
Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Appeal
This year children in our school council have been talking about how they can put our Christian value of ‘service’ into action. As we are approaching Christmas, they decided they would like to help bring joy to children around the world by taking part in the ‘Operation Christmas Child’ shoebox appeal, run by a charity called Samaritan’s purse. Operation Christmas Child involves packing shoeboxes full of gifts and sending them to children in need around the world. If you would like to join in with this initiative, you are more than welcome to pack a shoebox and drop to the school office on or before Thursday the 16th November so that our school staff can take them to the local collection point. There is a donation of £5 per box to cover transport which can be cash placed inside the box or it can be donated online. Through this campaign, we want to teach children here about generosity for others and compassion, to make them aware of the fact that there are children elsewhere in the world who have nothing, and give them the opportunity to do something practical, yet so simple, that can make such a difference. Thank you to all of those who have donated so far, we're very grateful for any support people are able to give - thank you.
Further details of the organisation and the campaign can be found on their website: Operation Christmas Child | Samaritan's Purse (samaritans-purse.org.uk)
Harvest Festival
This week, Year 3 led the Harvest Service in Earley St Peter's church in front of our school and parent community. Throughout the Service, pupils reflected on what Harvest means to us, to our community and to the world. They performed the story of 'The King and the Seed' to portray the key message of sowing seeds of kindness and honesty - both of which are one of the school's values. Everyone sang beautifully, performed confidently and narrated the story with clear intonation. The moral of this story was that if you sow seeds of honesty, kindness, respect, bravery and courage, then eventually you will reap many, many, rewards in life. We would like to thank all the parents for attending the service and supporting their children and for all harvest contributions.
The Harvest donations will be given to the Churches in Reading Drop in Centre (CIRDIC) and will be shared with people in need. This is another excellent example of our value of Service in action.
Fireworks Display - Thank you
We would like to extend a huge thank you to Jane Williams Vanessa Collins their ESPSA team for organising another hugely successful Fireworks Events. The school recognises the amount of time and effort that is invested into running an event of that scale and are hugely grateful to have such a dedicated and passionate School Association.
We are also grateful for all the volunteers that ran the stalls, marshalled the event, manned the gates and helped to set up or tidy away. It was clear from the excitement in school this week that the children thoroughly enjoyed the fireworks display.
Fireworks Litter Picking
We would like to pass on our thanks from the ESPSA Fireworks Committee to the volunteers who came up to school on the morning after to help clear up. Special thanks to some of our school pupils who were there at 7am helping in the pouring rain. They even found a missing wallet which was reunited with its owner.
Well done to Holly, James, Coen and Cody for demonstrating the school value of service!
Royal Berkshire Charity
During Collective Worship last week, we were very fortunate to have a representative from Royal Berkshire Charity who raise money for Royal Berkshire Hospital. Members of our School Council presented the charity with a cheque to show the amount of money the pupils and families of Earley St Peter's raised during our sponsored walk last year.
The charity were thrilled to receive a donation of £2193.18 which will be used to benefit the patients at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Raising money such an excellent cause is a great demonstration of our value of Service.
Swimming Pool
The school pool is open everyday during the summer holidays and run by our team of fantastic volunteers.
A huge thank you to our pool committee for all their hard work this year, we are incredibly lucky to have you!
