As a school, we are proud to support many charities - local, national and global - giving our pupils a chance to look at world issues and a voice to discuss them and be a part of the solution.  These charities are chosen by the children, led by the Pupil Leadership Team. Children are encouraged to reflect on the needs of others and actively involve themselves in fundraising.

Over the last two years, our chosen charities have been:

Local

• Oxygen - local New Malden charity supporting children and young people with mentoring and emotional support, with a charity shop in our high street 
• Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness - Christian charity in our borough that helps people who are homeless or at risk of losing their home by offering support, advice and practical help.

National

• Momentum - Charity working across our region of the UK supporting families with children with cancer or life limiting conditions
• British Heart Foundation - Charity that helps saves lives by funding research and supporting people with heart and circulatory diseases

Global

• Unicef - Global charity supporting children across the world who are affected by poverty or conflict
• Tearfund - Christian charity helping people around the world overcome poverty and disaster by working with local churches and communities to build a better future

We have supported these charities through introducing these charities through collective worship in the Autumn, ensuring children understand the scope of the work of each local, national and global charity. We then have a designated ‘bucket collection’ day just before Christmas, with children ‘choosing their bucket’, having considered which cause they want to support and are interested in seeing change in the world related to this particular issue.

Then, over Spring and Autumn, we hold three ‘Charity Tuesdays’, with representatives from our chosen charities visiting the school, and explaining more about the work of their charity in collective worship. Our Pupil Leadership Team talk to their classes regarding how each charity Tuesday may be ‘marked’ to encourage fundraising, and creative ideas to help children understand what the charity does and how they can support. 

Examples of engaging children in being agents of change have included our Pupil Leadership Team visiting the New Malden Oxygen Charity shop in the high street, to see the work they do. When supporting Momentum, we had a visit from ‘Mini-Mo’ the Owl for children to meet and have photos with, and hear more about the work of Momentum. 

Our charity Tuesdays usually raise up to £500 for each charity.

At Christ Church, we talk to the children about how they can be agents of change, especially relating this to the ‘Windows, Mirrors, Doors’ model, with the “door” being an opportunity for the children to take positive action in the world, taking inspiration from Jesus himself, but also other great religious leaders (for example, Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “be the change you wish to see in the world.”).

Pupils learn about being ‘agents of change’ and developing their own courageous advocacy, such as: 

• Our Year 3 and 4 children lead the work in putting our Harvest Service together and leading the talking, acting and singing.
• Promoting our ‘reverse advent calendar’ initiative at Christmas, which ensures lots of produce is donated for local food banks, with education for the children how this supports the local community.
• Some of the iShare Learning themes we cover over the year encourage children to consider their courageous advocacy, such as ‘Communion’ (Spring 2024), thinking about the wider community beyond what we know and ‘A Fair Share’ (Autumn 2024), focusing on the meaning of justice and responsibility in the world.
• A recent iShare theme, ‘Windows, Mirrors and Doors’ (Summer 2024) also promoted the message of opening doors to bring change to the world, and encouraged children to lead one small change in their life or in their community.
• Our choir perform for local community groups, including churches and a local widows’ group
• On both of our sites, children take responsibility for issues, such as litter picking and tidying away playground resources
• We regularly celebrate, through class time, newsletters and in collective worship children’s own achievements in fund raising or awareness raising for different causes, to share with the whole school community.
• We regularly seek feedback from pupils, and engage their views on aspects of school life and beyond, and introduce changes based on children’s views
• Our Year 6 Pupil Leaders are democratically elected via secret ballot, on the basis of their own campaign for change, and ideas put forward, in campaign speeches delivered to all junior children.
• As a school, we recently piloted the Church of England Difference Programme in our Year 3 classes, which led to rich discussions regarding how we can influence change by appreciating difference and breaking down barriers. We are implementing the Difference programme next year across the school. 
• We have run competitions which have promoted children’s ideas as vehicles of change. For example, we ran a poster competition promoting diversity, and displayed the winning posters across the school. Recently, we also ran a poetry recital competition, and a number of the winning children chose to perform their own poem with its own message for the world, such as this Year 6 entry, ‘A Hymn for Peace’