Community Partnerships
We are delighted that pupils are finally able to get back into the community to give their time volunteering for local charities. We have made new connections and embarked on new initiatives, hoping to make a real difference to the wider community.
From an educational perspective, St Edward’s is supporting a number of local primary schools through a variety of projects such as providing one-to-one help in the classroom, playtime fun and sports coaching:
Northern House Academy
We continue to work with our neighbours, Northern House Academy, based across the road from us on South Parade – a primary school for pupils who have been identified as having Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) difficulties. Our pupils visit their classrooms weekly and offer support with class-based activities and once a week, a group of Northern House pupils comes to St Edward’s, where our Sixth Formers offer a range of craft, toys and games for the pupils.
OX2 Collective
A youth theatre company that St Edward’s runs in partnership with The North Wall to link our pupils with young people from the wider community. OX2 Collective produced a performance of Wind / Rush Generation(s) by Mojisola Adebayo, at The North Wall as part of the National Theatre Connections festival in May 2021 and also took part in The Oxford Light Festival November 2021, for which Teddies pupils wrote and directed a promenade play, Light a Match, based on the themes of light, darkness and discovery, in which young people from the wider community performed.
Primary School Hockey
We hosted our first hockey tournament for primary schools in December, in conjunction with Oxford Hawks. All the schools involved received hockey coaching by either St Edward’s School or Oxford Hawks and Teddies welcomed over 190 Year 5 and Year 6 pupils.
Cutteslowe Community Partnership
We continue to build our relationship with this partnership and last Summer holiday, Teddies supported Cutteslowe Community Centre with their free Summer Programme of events for children aged 0-16. We contributed financially, as well as providing both sports and science activities and The North Wall Trust provided drama workshops, vegetable puppet making and a Nature Walk. Our catering staff also prepared over 150 Christmas meals over the course of December as part of the the Cutteslowe Christmas community meals initiative. We continue to be involved in a number of weekly volunteering activities at Cutteslowe.
Oxford Mutual Aid & The Limes Club
In addition to the Cutteslowe Christmas community meals initiative above, our catering department also supports Oxford Mutual Aid as part of their ‘Kitchen Collective Programme’. Each week they cook and box up in takeaway boxes, 75 main meals and puddings. They also support the Limes Club in North Oxford – a day centre providing care and support for those living with dementia. All attendees of the club are given a hot meal twice a week, cooked in the Teddies kitchens.
Asylum Welcome
St Edward’s worked with this local charity last term to invite refugees from Afghanistan living in Oxfordshire to the School on several Sunday afternoons and it was rewarding seeing the pupils and visitors interacting and enjoying each other’s company. In December we also worked with Asylum Welcome to run a gifts appeal for refugees living in Oxfordshire. This was hugely successful, with the Teddies Community providing Christmas presents for over 250 individuals. Asylum Welcome has been voted as the School charity for 2022 and we look forward to creating fundraising events and inviting local refugees back into School for more weekend activities.
The Gatehouse
The School charity for 2021 was The Gatehouse, for which St Edward’s raised over £13,000. Fundraising events included the School Steeplechase, Christmas Jumper Day, School Cake Sale, Carol Service collection, Tilly’s Horse Racing evening and the Oxford Half Marathon. A huge thank you to everyone who supported these events.
What next?
In addition to supporting our 2022 School Charity, Asylum Welcome, new projects on the horizon for Teddies include plans for pupils to run drama classes for local primary schools as part of their Pathways and Perspectives courses, Lego and Science workshops at local primary schools and volunteering at Oxford Hub and The Gatehouse. We are hoping to return to FarmAbility, a charity that offers farm based programmes for people with learning disabilities and also go back into local care homes – the pupils have greatly missed these partnerships.