Banstead Prep School Charity of the Year

At Stripey Stork we believe that kindness starts at a young age, and we love it when children fly the flag for Stripey Stork. Partnering with schools is a fantastic way to introduce children to important concepts like community, recycling, and charity. Over the last 18 months, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Banstead Preparatory School (affectionately known as ’Banstead Prep’), and we have been overwhelmed by the incredible support from their staff, parents, and local community.

Charity has always been at the heart of the Banstead Prep’s community (being ‘Compassionate’ tops their list of School Values), and they have raised money for a range of charities in the past. They made the decision to take this further and create a deeper, more meaningful link with a charity who they could support in multiple ways, not just financially. It was important to them that the charity they chose helped the children to understand that there are families and children in the local area who are less fortunate than themselves. They chose to support Stripey Stork and we were delighted to welcome them to Team Stork.

Supporting Stripey Stork provides the opportunity to teach our children values such as kindness, empathy, sharing and being part of a community. It opens discussions about recycling, minimising our impact on the environment and the importance of helping others – children and parents alike are thrilled to be able to pass on their pre-loved clothes and toys to those who need them. We are really looking forward to continuing our partnership with Stripey Stork this year!

Jon Chesworth, Headteacher

A lesson in reuse and sharing

At its core, our service is about facilitating families to pass on items that their children have outgrown to another family who need a helping hand. Every month we publish a wish list detailing the items that we need. Since they started supporting us, Banstead Prep have regularly held donation events, collecting items of clothing from our wish list. This is a really powerful and tangible way for families to support us, and it gives them an opportunity to involve their children in clearing out their clothes, equipment and toys. Most importantly it teaches children about how we can minimise our impact on the environment through recycling whilst also helping those less fortunate.

Supporting our campaigns

For many mums and female carers, Mother’s Day isn’t a priority as they struggle to make ends meet and their needs often come last. Our A Gift For Mum campaign is about recognising and appreciating the mums we support by gifting them a Mother’s Day gift bag filled with brand new toiletries. This campaign is only possible thanks to the donations that we receive, and we are grateful to the families at Banstead Prep for supporting us. They held a non-uniform day and instead of asking for money they requested that parents donate toiletries towards our campaign. We were delighted when a car full of donations arrived at the warehouse and our volunteers were soon adding the donations to the gift bags.

Earning their stripes

This year, for the second year running, the staff, children and parents at Banstead Prep joined in with our Stripes4Stripey day. This is a day to celebrate all things stripey and raise vital funds to enable us to continue to provide support to families across Surrey. They all wore their stripes and even the sun played its part – the stripey ice lolly sale they had planned was the perfect sunny-day treat and raised over £800.

Becoming our ambassadors

With a new academic year approaching Banstead Prep remain committed to the importance of teaching children the value of empathy and helping those in need where they can by continuing to support Stripey Stork. With upcoming campaigns like Run Reigate and Santa Stork providing exciting fundraising opportunities, ongoing wish list collections as well as some new fundraising ideas, we are very much looking forward to continuing to work with these Team Stork ambassadors.

Working closely with Charlotte from Banstead Prep we have lots of fun fundraising events planned for the coming year. We’re so grateful for the support from pupils, staff and parents in supporting these events and helping to support our work in providing essential items for families across Surrey. By partnering with a school like Banstead Prep we can really make a difference to the lives of the families we support.

Maxine Cayton, Community Fundraiser at Stripey Stork

Support Stripey Stork

We would love to get more schools and their communities involved with the work we do. When you choose to support us you will meet our dedicated Community Fundraiser who can visit your school to give talks at assemblies and attend any fundraising events. We’ll work with you to devise a fundraising plan that suits your school community. On our website we have lots of marketing materials such as posters, colouring sheets and logos and we can also help with designing any content for your communications. If your school would like to work with us and help to make a difference to families across Surrey, then please email partnerships@stripeystork.org.uk.