Charitable Giving

Charity enriches the soul of the giver as much as the hopes of the receiver

Fundraising for various charities are an omnipresent part of school life. Events in the past years have included

• Various fundraising events as part of the school CCF 150th anniversary celebrations.  £7862 were raised for service charities.
• Collections on Green Day which raised £750 for charities in Africa.
• Almost termly charity art exhibitions both by staff and pupils, who donate their time and art to raise funds for charity.
• Participation in Really Good Dinner Week, where  a simple meal is served in place of the standard gourmet Tonbridge lunch and the money saved contributed to the World Food programme.
• An annual Pink Day, when boys go pink for breast cancer charity.
• A Christmas sale organised by Design & Technology staff and students which raised £805 for Cancer Research UK.
• Big Yellow Friday, when the whole school dressed up in yellow to raise £700 for the Children's Liver Disease Foundation.
• A photography exhibition by Graeme Gales, in memory of a dear friend, which raised £3000 for Cancer Research.
• Tonbridge Has Talent, organised by sixth formers from Tonbridge School and Weald of Kent Grammar School, raised £1700 for local charities.  Find out more
• The sale of paintings by Vietnamese street children from an exhibition in the School Gallery.  A Tonbridge School Tour  visited Vietnam in October 2009 as a follow up to this.
• Children in Need Charity walk.  Organised independtly by a group of Smythe House Fifth Form boys.  Find out more
• The whole School Charity Day on July 2nd 2008. The main focus of this was a 16 mile sponsored walk which raised £30 000 for the The Bridge Trust, The Hospice in the Weald, AmaniKids and Orchid-Cancer. Find out more
• A fashion show, organised by Sixth formers from Tonbridge and Weald of Kent Girls which involved over 50 students involved and raised £2000 for the Hospice in the Weald. Find out more
• The Novi Year Group fundraiser which raised enough money to sponsor a room for a year at Centrepoint (shelter for the homeless youth in London).
• The Bridge Trust's annual 'sleep out' which was hosted by the school in "the Quad" and supported by some members of staff and pupil.
• The Parents Arts Society regular charitable donations (£1500 in the past year).
• The Hillside sponsored walk on March 16th which involved the whole house and raised £2500 for Linden Lodge (London) and Hospice in the Weald.
• Smythe House sponsorship of a child's education in Africa

School academic and sports tours abroad now seek to ally the primary purpose of such trips with some charitable work with the disadvantaged in the countries they visit.

Examples include:

• South America trip (2008) - This includes doing volunteer work constructing a new playground for a primary school in Andahuaylillas, an impoverished village community near Cusco.
• South African Golf tour (2008) - This includes fundraising for, and visiting Nogqwasa Primary School.

The school recently donated £10 000 to Amani Children's Home, Tanzania. This money was raised by on the Whole School Charity day in July.

Joe Ventura (Amani Children's Home) writes:

Warm regards from all of the children and caregivers at Amani. We are deeply grateful for all of the students, staff and parents at Tonbridge school's amazing generosity to the children at Amani. Your wonderful fundraiser provided Amani with an unexpected, but greatly needed, source of funds this year. It wasn't very difficult to decide how this money will be used.

Each year our students in their last year of primary school take an exam called the Primary School Exit Exam. Based on the scores of this test, the students will either go on to secondary school or begin vocational training in a specific skill set. There are a number of vocational training centers in Moshi that Amani has sent children to to prepare them to become self-sustaining adults, but often these courses are very expensive and Amani must find a way to transport all of the children to and from these centers each day.

We decided to begin the process of making our own small workshop for the children who aren't able to get a placement in a government secondary school. This workshop will be a place for the children to learn how to use a hammer and saw and other basic carpentry skills, hopefully giving them a skill set that will allow them to find work and become self-sustaining adults. The small building is being built now and we will be using the contribution from Tonbridge school to pay for building costs and also to begin filling the workshop with tools and equipment. We'll need hammers, saws, screwdriver sets and lots of wood. We'll also need to hire a part-time carpenter to teach the children these skills. A hammer in Tanzania costs about 15,000Tsh (about 7 GBP) and the salary for a part-time carpenter for one month is about 75,000Tsh (36 GBP). We won't know the final costs of the small workshop for a number of weeks, but I'm happy to send that to you as well as pictures of the project. We hope to commit the Tonbridge funds for this project and whatever is left over will be used for the salary and any other costs involved in this small vocational training center.