FOCUS ON GRANTS FOR LITERACY Funding libraries and books
‘We received a £15,000 grant for our library’
T
he worst thing that can happen when you ask for support is that someone can say no, but I never
expected a single email request to lead to a £15,000 grant for our new school library! Yet that’s exactly what happened when I approached a large company close to our primary academy in Essex. Our school has recently expanded
from a one to two-form entry to accommodate up to 480 children, from nursery through to Key Stage 2. Building work funded by the local authority was completed earlier this year. However, there were no funds for the school’s communal areas and facilities.
The vision of our new
headteacher, Jack Arnold, was to create an IT centre and adventurous new library space that would make reading and books exciting and accessible for all our pupils. Both required substantial funding, so the PTA (with our new chair, Gemma Robertson) sat down with Jack to discuss how we could support each project together. Since I work on the PTA and am also a parent governor, I was able to feed in from both sides. As a PTA, we felt it was important
for parents to see how their donations help improve the school for all our children, so we decided to focus on fundraising for the
library. The project included ambitious plans for a treehouse for children to climb into or sit underneath, curved amphitheatre- style seating for whole class teaching, squashy corner seating and toadstool seating. Our school is near DP World’s
logistics hub at London Gateway and I knew they had been helping schools with funding for eco- projects, so I wrote an email outlining what support we were looking for. Sustainability manager Emma
out more Find If your school lies within
the London Gateway area you can approach the DP World community fund for support at LondonGateway CommunityFund @
dpworld.com
Cowper replied and we invited her and two other DP World representatives to visit. This was a great opportunity for Jack to ‘sell’ the school, explaining what made it special. One of the visitors, who is also a Scout leader, absolutely loved our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) scheme, which includes a tyre stack, huge sandpit, pond and zipwire. The other representative was really interested in our focus on mental health and wellbeing, including our Student Wellbeing Champions.
After the visit, Emma asked
for a list of what we needed to create the library. She then gave us the incredible news that DP World was so impressed by our school, it had decided to cover the whole cost! The PTA raised an additional £2,500 through a series of smaller events to cover items, such as décor and rugs, that we hadn’t included in the original list. We also ran a sponsored read event with Usborne Publishing to raise money for new books, which gave us £2,200 to spend and add to our existing
18 AUTUMN 2023 FundEd
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