Who we are
The Friends of Windrush (Charlton) is a volunteer parent organisation. We support our amazing, inner-London school by organising events for the whole school community to enjoy. We also fundraise to finance important projects that the school's regular budget doesn't stretch to: from in-class air purifiers to extra classroom resources and creative playground equipment. By coming together as a community and rolling our sleeves up, we make things happen!
What we are fundraising for and why this is important
Playing is essential for children's healthy development. It creates and improves well-being and supports children's ability to identify and manage risk. Research shows that successful playtime helps children better regulate their emotions, leading to higher attainment and happier children. Playtime makes up 20% of primary-aged children's school life - that is 231 hours or 37 days per school year!
There are no two ways about it - our playground is currently lacking, both in equipment and greenery. We want to take positive community action, transform it and create an engaging and play-inspiring playground for the children to enjoy.
What we want to do and how we are going to achieve it
STEP 1: Our school is engaging with OPAL playtime experts to turn our playground into a play haven with more opportunities for creative, imaginative and inclusive play. We are supporting this initiative by fundraising to pay for the new loose parts sheds and the creative play equipment, and our target is to raise thirteen thousand pounds to get this project off the ground. We have already fundraised over £3,000 for this project through our annual summer fayre, regular pre-loved uniform sales, etc. Now it's time for the big push, and we can do this with your help!
STEP 2: Once we achieve our initial fundraising goal for the play equipment, we will push on towards the next step: to make our playgrounds greener! This will create opportunities for the children to get their hands positively dirty by taking care of the plants while breathing cleaner air, lovingly filtered by nature.
How you can help transform our children's playtime
Our strength is in our magnificent, diverse, inner-London community, as well as in all our individual connections: other caring people and communities. Not everybody is in a position to contribute financially, but together we can spread the word, reach out to our grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other wider communities we are part of. You don't need to be a parent at Windrush to be a Friend of Windrush! Every donation, however big or small gets us closer to our goal and, most importantly, our children closer to enjoying fulfilling, imaginative playtime!
Together, we will make this happen.