Pauls4All

Overseen by the charities committee, which aims to encourage the whole school community to support both domestic and international charities, Pauls4All runs many activities. Highlights from the academic year 2010/2011 include:

• Fund-raising for Friends of Tafo, ‘a UK registered charity that aims to empower as well as help the people of Kwahu-Tafo, an impoverished rural town in Ghana’, enabled the charity to redevelop the toilet block in the town’s Catholic school (something already achieved at the Presbyterian and Muslim schools), using local people to undertake the project. We are delighted to have continued our involvement with Friends of Tafo in this way. Humphrey Barclay, founder of the charity, and Boat, whose father is the village chief, joined us at a Sixth form (Year 11) assembly to collect the money raised.
• Supporting the Senahasa Trust and their work at Unawatuna Maha Vidyalaya school (Unawatuna, Sri Lanka), combining a cricket tour with fund-raising (see our report from January, 2011). £17,000 was raised at a pre-tour dinner. We also donated cricket kit to the school. In June, the third Senahasa tournament took place at St Paul’s, raising further funds.
• We continued to support Onverwag School in Mooi River, Natal, combining fund-raising with rugby tours. In 2004, parents and boys raised £4,000, allowing the school to be connected to the electricity grid. In 2010, parents and boys raised £30,000, enabling the building of a new block housing a crèche, library and kitchen (assuring each pupil of a good daily meal).
• Haiti earthquake: we raised money via an impromptu Mufti Day, contributing just under £4,500 to DEC to help with relief work.
• Pakistan floods: on the initiative of Saif Islam (Lower Eighth, Year 12), we held a charity basketball match, followed by a Mufti Day, raising funds to help the DEC appeal. We organised further fund-raising in aid of the Japan earthquake and tsunami appeal. In total, funds raised amounted to well over £5,000.
• Students Supporting Street Kids, a charity founded at St Paul’s whose aim is to support street children worldwide, undertook their annual sponsored bike ride around Richmond Park and also organised a five-a-side football event to raise money.
• Near the end of the summer term, Scott Bell and Ben Fraser (Fifth form, Year 10) organised a touch-rugby competition in support of Help for Heroes.
• The final whole school 2010/2011 event was in support of this year’s Red Nose Day, which coincided with a jazz performance in the atrium over lunchtime as well as a fund-raising quiz organised by our library staff.