SUPPORTING OUR COMMUNITY

In addition to school partnerships, we are immersed in our local community.

We work with local community partners to address local needs. These include Regenerate Rise, Fulham FC Foundation and Wayfarers Flyerz that we have highlighted elsewhere. We also work with the Children’s Book Project and HMP Wandsworth to distribute books to those who need them. We have collected and rehomed thousands of much needed books to those who are keen to read them in our community. We support refugees through work with West London Welcome and our own initiatives providing funds, clothing, and support. We provide Christmas hampers to local single parent families in crisis. We have highlighted several of these initiatives here.

Our Lower and Middle School pupils assemble Christmas hampers for single-parent families in our local area through our partnership with the charity CHEER, based at St Mark’s Church Battersea. Each class collects wonderful, much needed staples as well as Christmas treats and beautifully wrapped presents for each member of their assigned families. We typically collect for 72 families in our local area each year. Our Emanuel community support makes such a difference to our vulnerable neighbours.

Our Sixth form pupils fundraise and collect food and much needed items for a local homeless day centre, Ace of Clubs. We have worked closely with the charity for over 10 years. They provide transformative support for homeless, vulnerable, and otherwise marginalised people in our area. At their centre on St Alphonsus Road, they provide for the immediate needs of those in desperate circumstances with safety, food, warmth, clothing, laundry, and showers. Ace of Clubs currently helps up to 180 people per day. The funds raised and food donated are always gratefully received.

In response to the Afghan refugee crisis, we partnered with local charity West London Welcome to support the growing network of Afghan refugees in our community. With the help of an amazing team of parent volunteers, we delivered 1000s of items of clothing for 5 to 16 year old children. West London Welcome were thrilled by our generosity.

The recent Ukrainian refugee crisis reinforced the need for us to support those fleeing war and persecution. In partnership with the White Eagle Polish Club in Balham, we were able to deliver 160 black bin bags of much needed medical, hygiene and sanitary supplies as well as thermal clothing. Emanuel parent volunteers diligently sorted, repacked, labelled, carried, counted and transported thousands of generously donated items. Our donations were delivered to those that needed them within two days of our collection.

In addition to collecting much needed items, we have donated £15,000 to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC) Ukrainian appeal. We have also reached out to our community and provided several school places to children hosted by Emanuel families. We launched the Coffee and Conversation Hub to enable refugee families to network and practise their English in a safe, supportive environment.

We are incredibly grateful to Emanuel School’s parents, teachers and students for their amazing efforts collecting and donating huge amounts of clothes for newly-arrived Afghan refugees in West London. Our new neighbours were thrilled to be given them for themselves and their children.