A school in Surbiton raised over £2500 for the Royal Star and Garter veterans’ charity by taking part in the Winter Walk 10km challenge.
Twenty pupils and teachers from Southborough High School visit the charity’s Surbiton home regularly and together they took part in the 10km London walk alongside 600 others last Saturday, initially hoping to raise £1500.
Royal Star and Garter is a charity providing specialist care to veterans and their partners living with disability and dementia, with homes in Surbiton, Solihull and High Wycombe.
Niall Smith, headteacher at Southborough High School, told the South West Londoner that the school has been working with Royal Star and Garter homes for a number of years, and that both sides benefit from the collaboration.
Smith said: ”It’s about values. Our values are really coherent, we look after people and are respectful of people’s contribution in society, and help the community.
“The money is only part of it, what we’re trying to do is raise awareness, generate publicity, and give the students a sense of achievement and agency.”
Pupils at the Surbiton boys’ school have been visiting the Royal Star and Garter home as part of their collaboration, playing bingo or skittles and singing songs with the residents.
Smith said: “The students absolutely love it. Young people generally get quite bad press and teenage boys in particular, but they absolutely love the opportunity to be caring, help others and take responsibility.”
Matthew Iles, governor of the school, worked as a teacher at Southborough High School for 15 years, and used to take pupils to visit the homes, play board games, and tell stories.
Iles said: “Their lives in significant ways were very different to the lives of these boys, some of them don’t normally meet people of 80, 90 years of age.
“Many of these boys would read about these events, and some of the residents who came to speak lived through them.”
He was pleased that the pupils, who are between 12 and 14 years old, and their parents overtook their fundraising goal by £1000, and said: “That’s a massive achievement.”
The students’ self-esteem has benefited from doing extracurricular activities, which give them a sense of doing something positive and constructive, governor Iles said.
He said: “The idea is to try to help these boys make positive contributions to the school life and wider community so that hopefully as they get older they end up with positive outcomes.”
Heather Perkins, Senior Partnerships Officer at the Royal Star and Garter, travelled from her home in Newcastle to London for the event: “There was nothing that was going to stop me from being here today.”
Perkins, a RAF veteran herself, used to work on helicopters, until she struggled after her tour in Afghanistan and that sparked her passion for working with veteran charities.
She said: “I made a decision that I didn’t want any other veteran, no matter what stage in life they were in, to struggle or feel alone in their struggle.”
She said that, when the charity found out they would participate in the challenge, it was an obvious choice to get the school involved in the fundraising activity.
She added: “Many people ask if there are issues with age gaps, but no, there is so much that can be learned from different individuals in different age groups.”
Ryan O’Connor, who served in the RAF for just over four and a half years, said he joined the charity as a fundraiser because him and his family, who also served, will end up relying on it.
Image credits: Heather Perkins
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