Community Partnerships and Outreach

As an integral part of the Wandsworth community, one of our key aims is to enhance social mobility in our neighbourhood.

Primary Ambitions

The Primary Ambitions programme involves running weekly enrichment sessions for groups of 15 Year 6 pupils from 18 different local state primary schools. Every Friday, we welcome 285 pupils to Emanuel to take part in the programme. Emanuel Lower Sixth pupils coach and mentor in areas as wide-ranging as gymnastics, film making, languages, drama, politics, maths and science. Feedback from partner primary schools and participating pupils has been overwhelmingly positive.

Since launching Primary Ambitions, in September 2019, we have worked with 25 local primary schools and offered over 10,000 hours of education, sport or cultural opportunities to their pupils. Our partner primary schools are chosen for their high percentage of children qualifying for free school meals, a government indicator for deprivation.

“We have seen increased confidence [in our students], especially when speaking in public – speaking with clarity and maturity.”

Shaftesbury Park Primary

Supporting Our Local Community Through Covid-19

With the impact of Covid-19 and the resulting school closures, planned partnership activities had to be postponed. Instead, we focused our community partnership activities on supporting those most in need in our local community.

During the first lockdown in March 2020, we launched a meal delivery programme. By the end of the summer term last year, we had delivered over 5520 nutritious meals to nearly 1400 families in seven of our partner primary schools including Chesterton, Christ Church, Falconbrook, Fulham, Goldfinch, Griffin, and Sulivan Primaries.

In addition, we provided much-needed books to Christ Church CE Primary through an online book drive; 4000 face masks, facilitated by an Emanuel parent, to our community partner organisations including Spires, Sands End Adventure Playground, Katherine Low Settlement, Regenerate Rise and the Smile Brigade; refurbished laptops to Westminster City School, one of our Foundation partner schools; and digital devices to ‘Power to Connect’, an initiative to provide much-needed laptops to school children without online access to learning. When Emanuel closed at short notice, we also donated surplus food to the Wandsworth Foodbank and the Ace of Clubs charity. Forty of our Sixth Form pupils volunteered over the first lockdown and the summer holidays at catch-up summer school programmes for pupils at two partner primary schools.

With school closures from January 2021, families in our partner primary schools were once again struggling to put nutritious food on the table. We re-launched the meals-in-a-bag programme with the Emanuel Catering department preparing the food and staff delivering it to partner primary schools. Each meal-in-a-bag included a recipe card and all of the ingredients to make a tasty meal for a family of four. By Easter, we had delivered over 11,000 meals to 13 partner schools.

Lessons-in-a-Box

In the Autumn term of 2020, due to Covid-19 restrictions, Lower Sixth pupils were unable to teach Primary Ambitions onsite. Instead, they prepared the resources for ‘lessons-in-a-box’, with support from specialist Emanuel staff, which were passed on to our primary schools for their teachers to facilitate.

We were thrilled to win the Independent Schools of the Year 2021 community outreach category for our work in this area.

“The class teacher is extremely impressed with the content, the detail and the excellent resources. The children are really enjoying the lessons. You can tell how much work has gone into each lesson and the thought and detail is evident in the planning.”

Sulivan Primary Supporting Afghan and Ukrainian Refugees

In response to the recent Afghan refugee crisis, we partnered with local charity West London Welcome to support the growing network of Afghan refugees in our community by collecting and delivering thousands of items of children’s clothing.

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 bags of medical, hygiene and sanitary supplies as well as thermal clothing.

In addition to collecting much-needed items, the Emanuel community has 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 have recently launched the Coffee and Conversation Hub to enable refugee families to network and practise their English in a safe, supportive environment on Saturday mornings at Emanuel.

Ascent

In the summer term, we run ‘Ascent’, a Saturday booster programme for 30 of our primary school partners’ Year 5 pupils. We were delighted to receive funding for the programme from the Foundation’s Covid Catapult fund.

Ascent’s initial aim was to ‘close the gap’ for pupils within our local communities who were hardest hit by the Covid-19 driven school closures. As we move beyond Covid, our intent is to support Year 5 children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are failing to meet national standards in the core subjects of literacy and maths. We provide booster curriculum-linked sessions in the core subjects of maths and literacy supplemented by interactive, fun hands-on science sessions and co-curricular lessons (Drama, Art and Sport). Our aim is to help participating children to catch up then to solidify their basic knowledge and skills, build their confidence and empower them to exceed national standards.

We run nine Saturday morning sessions in the summer term plus an additional two-day session at the end of our term before the state schools break up for the summer holidays. Sessions are led by Emanuel staff supported by Emanuel and Westminster City School Sixth Form volunteers.

Ongoing Community Initiatives

We share our facilities; for example, we host weekly adult disability football sessions on our mini astro with Fulham FC Foundation and young people’s disability hockey with Wayfarer’s Flyerz.We provide weekly swimming lessons for five local primary schools each term and offer access to our biodiversity garden.

We run many other activities with our partners including football tournaments, enrichment sessions, joint workshops and school trips, our very own Dragons’ Den competition and a fabulous literary competition run by the local author and illustrators’ group, CWISL. We also support local community organisations including Regenerate Rise, a community centre for the elderly; Spires and Ace of Clubs, charities supporting homeless people in our neighbourhood; and the Christmas hamper initiative through St Mark’s amongst others.