Parents met in the Community Hub with Lewisham Citizens to share their concerns about Housing in Lewisham as part of our ongoing campaigning.
Each year, every class choose a Community project to support. Projects can focus on a local, national or global community and the children plan actions to make a difference. In a special worship, each class shared their plans for this year.
Our Year 3 class have visited the construction site as developers create a new playground in Lewisham Park for the whole community to enjoy. The children learned about the designs for the playground and how fundraising has enabled this amazing new space for children to enjoy.
This well attended workshop provided parents with an opportunity to learn more about applying for Secondary School and how to support your child with the transition.
Our children love to meet our elderly friends from the local community and there is much that the older and younger generations can learn from each other. As a thank you for being invited to St Mary's to enjoy School events, the residents of Bentley Court arranged a collection. We welcomed them to a special worship in order for them to share their generous donation, which will benefit our children's education!
St Mary's were happy to welcome our local community to a Ladywell Ward meeting, attended by local Councillors and representatives from Lewisham council. As part of the meeting, we were proud to share our Forest School garden and say thank you for the Lewisham NCIL funding that helped us to create the garden.
A special worship was held for each class to share their Courageous Advocacy projects, which they have chosen to benefit the local and wider communities that our school is blessed to be a part of. We were delighted to welcome back Ladywell Ward Councillor Laura Cunningham to St Mary's, she commented "It was so moving hearing about the local, national and international community projects the children are leading. What a special assembly full of talent, joy and kindness. I can’t wait to come back and see how you are getting on. Thank you to everyone."
Year 2 love to visit the Therapeutic Garden as part of their community work. They had lots of fun learning how to construct a compost heap in order to make the garden sustainable. The children have helped to create a beautiful and peaceful garden for the local community to enjoy.
Many of our parents, carers, pupils and staff speak languages other than English. St. Mary's is proud of the diverse and multi-cultural background of our families. Sometimes when families first arrive in the UK language can be a real barrier to obtaining information and settling in. It can be very hard and isolating for parents and children.
So at St. Mary's we are creating a database of language leaders amongst our parents, pupils and staff so that we can quickly get help in translating conversations for newly arrived parents and children and help them to settle in quickly. These parent language leaders came to an information session to learn more about the role and they appear on our website here: https://st-marys.lewisham.sch.uk/language-leaders.html. If you would like to be a language leader, please let Mrs Tildesley know. St. Mary's campaign for better housing continued with an action outside Lewisham Town Hall last month. We gathered there with people representing 17 local institutions from Lewisham Citizens to call time on poor housing in Lewisham.
Our school council designed some beautiful cards asking for houses to be made into homes as we highlighted that some accommodation is far from perfect. One of our parents spoke brilliantly about how poor accommodation affects everyday life as well as her physical and mental health. The children made lots of noise to attract attention and we then delivered the cards along with photos of current conditions that families are living in to Councillor Sophie Davies. Housing is a huge issue affecting our families - please join us for our next Housing Action Meeting in the near future! |
Community ProjectsFind out about the community projects we are working on Archives
February 2024
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