There has been much discussion internally about how Sherborne House might make a greater impact on society with our school’s resources for good. The environment and societal issues at large are constant topics in the classroom and subjects for debate amongst our pupils.
With this in mind, we have looked at how we can create more meaningful and impactful ways to work this year, and have put it to the children that instead of spreading our resources, we would work in partnership with one charity for the 2021/2 academic year as a trial.
A local charity, the Murray Parish Trust, is a Hampshire based charity which is dedicated to the advancement of paediatric emergency medicine across the South of England. The charity ensures that children affected by major trauma can receive the best emergency care as close to home as possible. With minimal overheads, as much as 90% of the funds the charity raises goes directly to its primary cause.
As a highly proactive charity, the Murray Parish Trust has helped raise over £2.5 million for Southampton Hospital. This has included funding for a brand new Children’s Emergency & Trauma Department, 2 new bed bays for the PICU, a full-time counsellor and a specialist helicopter gurney to transport critically ill infants via Air Ambulance, as well as a Specialist Intensive Care Children’s Bed and a 3D Modelling Printer for paediatric cardiac patients.
We put it to the children that we would like to support the children focused charity, and they overwhelmingly agreed that this was a good idea. Here you can see the School Council discussing ideas for fundraising.
To this end, we would like to concentrate our efforts for charitable fundraising and giving to supporting The Murray Parish Trust. Primarily a child focused charity it aligns with the school’s values and all in all we think supporting children’s health locally is a great way to make a bigger societal difference to our local area.
The current fund raising emphasis is an iMRI Suite Appeal is – a challenge to raise £2.1 million to fund a revolutionary intra-operative MRI (iMRI) Suite at Southampton Children’s Hospital. This campaign will make the hospital a next generation centre for paediatric neurosurgery and pioneering research, which will advance the treatment and care of children across the region and beyond.
We have already signed up to participate in the charity’s ‘Hampshire Hares’ initiative, which will go live in Summer 2022. We intend to hold fund raising activities through the year, with the aim of having an accumulated total by July.
Although we will of course observe national charitable giving drives such as Children in Need and Red Nose Day, we would ask that parents support us in our wish to consolidated giving to help the school make a greater impact.
We are still formulating plans, so please bear with us for news about our plans for fundraising.