If you’re wondering why we’ve gone all floral, it’s to remind everyone that our goal this year is to raise the funds to start re-building the school’s Butterfly Garden
Making the Butterfly Garden into a usable space will add 30% to the outdoor space within the school perimeter. The garden will be a designated quiet outdoor space for use by staff and pupils to enhance well-being and inclusion. We’ll share an update on the project and what is needed to make it happen.
It’s not just cash we need… if you are a landscaper, surveyor, structural engineer, work in construction or can help write grant applications and would like to help out we’d especially like to hear from you.
Our target fundraise for the garden project this year is £70,000 and thanks to your support and our brilliant organising committee we’re over half way there!
Our next big fundraiser is the London Bridges Challenge Walk on 24th March. We’re hiking 15km from Bermondsey to Battersea and crossing all the bridges along the way. Ask your friends and family to sponsor you for this tough challenge to help us reach the target.
A massive contribution of over £2,000 came last term from our year 7 entrepreneurs who took on the challenge of our first ever Enterprise Competition. Read on to find out all about this great initiative.
Our Community Partners have made a huge difference to our fundraising this year with 3 fantastic local businesses signed up to this new programme
Al Gusto, Rampton Baseley and Four Sides have each written a short piece to tell you about themselves and why they’re keen to support our local school. Please consider these and the businesses listed in our fab new Business Directory when you’re choosing where to shop, eat out and buy services. We are proud of our local community and encourage everyone to shop locally.
We’re be going all-out to meet that £70k target and have a few ideas for fundraising outside of PA events to share with you too. One of these is company matched funding. We’ve pulled together a list of companies that offer matching for donations or funds raised at events. Please check what is on offer at your place of work - it’s free money for our school!
ICYMI Bolingbroke PA has gone social and now has a presence on Instagram and Facebook
Please follow, like and comment! We’ll be posting info on our schedule of great up-coming community events on all the channels as well on the events page of our website. You’ll want to mark your diary for the not-to-be-missed Spring Fair on 27th April. The team are already hard at work planning this year’s Fair and it promises to be better than ever!
As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch about anything and everything. We’d love to hear from you.
As ever we thank you all for your friendship and fantastic support.
Vic Davies, Chair chair@bolingbrokepa.org
Tanya Drummond, Co-chair co-chair@bolingbrokepa.org
For the most up to date event information and to book your place at one of our events, please refer to the events page
p1
Bolingbroke PA is now on social media so we’re beyond excited to shout
Please follow us on Instagram and Facebook
👍🏼@bolingbrokepa
We’ve launched the Bolingbroke PA Business Directory for businesses of parents and friends of our school to showcase their services to our community
We hope their support will encourage you to consider their services when you shop and keep it local!
If you’d like to list a business or know someone who would you can sign up here.
Enormous thanks go to Pierre Moret, year 7 dad and generally excellent person, for his vision and relentless energy in setting up our business partnerships and directory.
If you’d like to discuss business sponsorship opportunities or any other ideas about business partnering please contact us.
This year’s Quiz Night on 26th January was a brilliant intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) challenge and a great fun night out
Check out the Gallery page of our website for the photos, scoreboard and all the quiz materials
Congratulations to the triumphant winning team
DDD
They’re already looking forward to hosting next year’s quiz night… watch this space!
Christmas is a distant memory but we’re more than happy to take a little peek back at the lovely festive glow of our Christmas Fayre
We thank everyone who made this the sparkly, festive and fun event it was. This year we added some fabulously creative games which entertained everyone and kept the players wanting more of the delicious food and drink on offer.
Events like this are important to connect our community and to create memories for all. We certainly achieved that and on top we’re delighted to report that the Fayre and our other Christmas fundraisers added over £8k to our fund to re-build the Butterfly Garden.
Many people helped out on the day but we have to say the biggest thank yous to the organisational and creative team of Marina Dempster, Coco Weller and Caroline Hanson whose incredible hard work and dedication made it all possible.
All the photos of the Fayre and our other Christmas events are in the gallery section of our website here. We thank Christine and Ben from R3 Photography for the gorgeous photos which they have generously donated.
If you’d like to help organise next year’s Christmas events or help out with the up-coming Spring Fair we’re hiring! Please get in touch here.
Our next big fundraiser…. 15k and 12 London bridges
Are you up for the challenge?
Bolingbroke PA sponsored walks are legendary and for good reason. They’re a memorable day out walking with friends and family through some iconic London scenery AND they’re an amazing way to raise funds for our school.
p3
In November, our amazing year 7s, the youngest in the school, set up small businesses and raised over £2,400 in just one week selling soaps, croissants, drinks and offering services to their neighbours. There was a little competition and the winning team netted over £700!
The teams reported back that they learned so much and had a lot of fun in the process.
Check out this page to see how it worked and who the winners were.
We’d love to run this competition in other years… after all, why should year 7 have all the fun?!
We have a whole package of materials, hints and tips ready to go. All that is needed is a parent or two to lead and liaise with school.
It’s a limited commitment and a brilliant way of raising funds from new sources. Even more importantly, you’re creating an invaluable opportunity for pupils to try out their business skills.
p4
Re-building the Butterfly Garden will increase usable space on the school site by 30%
The project is the vision of Claire Edis, Bolingbroke Academy’s Principal. Her aspiration is to create an outdoor quiet area for children and staff to use throughout the school day
Ms Edis has asked the PA to raise the necessary funds. We’re allocating some of last year’s funds raised and almost all of our fundraising this year to this project.
We’ve also enlisted some parents who are experts in architecture and construction to help design and spec the new garden. Shout out to Zac Monro who is generously donating time of his architects on the design side (find him in our Business Directory) and Marc Thiry who has been invaluable in providing cost details for the project.
Zac has developed a great modular design which will allow us to progressively build and develop the garden as we are able to raise further funds. You can take a peek at the initial design sketches here.
The Butterfly Garden today… not many butterflies to be seen!
Our goal for 2024
In time for the new school year in September we hope to have built a usable space. This means clearing and containing the earth, clearing the gravel, building a wall and putting in hard flooring for the main area of the garden. We will also be installing electrics and drainage.
If we raise more money than we expect, we may be able to go to the next stage of installing seating and a canopy roof to weather-proof the space. I f not, this will become the goal for school year 2024-5. We’ve come up with a modular design which will enable us to add elements as we raise the necessary funds.
Get involved
We’d love to hear form anyone who is interested in helping out or has ideas to contribute on the design, building or fundraising side should contact Vic Davies by email.
We’re over half way to our year 1 fundraising target 🙌🏽
Our target for this year is £70,000 which will get us to stage 1 of our build with all of the major infrastructure in place and a usable space from September’s start of year.
As we raise more funds in the next school year we will add further features such as a canopy, seating, planting and we hope to eventually be able to develop the Wakehurst Road corner to maximise the use of space.
p5
As a PA our goals are getting more ambitious so we are expanding our fundraising outside of the parent community
We are proud to introduce the brilliant local businesses who have signed up to be our Community Partners for 2024: Rampton Baseley, Four Sides, Al Gusto and Oddono’s.
Find out here why they are convinced supporting Bolingbroke is a great way to give back.
We’ve also launched the Bolingbroke PA Business Directory for businesses of parents and friends to showcase their services to our community.
We hope their support will encourage you to consider their services when you shop and keep it local!
Proprietor Carlos Ornelas writes
Dear All
We are delighted to announce our partnership with Bolingbroke Academy as their community partner.
As a restaurant deeply rooted in the local community for the past 16 years, we are passionate about more than just serving delicious food to our patrons. We have made it our mission to actively engage with the school community, fostering a love for education and promoting shared values that contribute to the positive development of our future leaders. We believe that by collaborating with Bolingbroke Academy, we can contribute to creating a nurturing environment where students can flourish and reach their full potential. We are proud to be a part of this incredible journey alongside the school and invite all members of the community to join us in supporting our local schools.
We have a new Al Gusto restaurant in Fulham in addition to our local location on 85 Northcote Road, so please come along and enjoy delicious cuisine and excellent service.
We very much look forward to seeing you.
Founder Joel Baseley writes
Regularly we are asked the same question by journalists. “What is it about your part of SW London that makes it so popular? What’s so special?” We have been asked so many times over the years that the reply just rolls off the tongue: “the schools, the open space, the café culture and most importantly the sense of community”.
We do not take this for granted, these are all really important things. They are the reasons why our clients want to be here and they are the reasons we want to be here. As such we feel a responsibility to support the institutions that make this place so special, in particular the schools and the sports clubs.
Of course it’s not entirely altruistic. It all helps with brand awareness and promotion but it also feels like it’s the right thing to do. Not least because our children have attended these schools and clubs. These great institutions are at the heart of what makes the community around the Commons tick. Take Battersea Ironsides for an example: officially the rugby club with the largest playing membership in Europe who can also OFFICIALLY boast the most talented and passionate army of volunteers that make it what it is. We are seriously proud of them and their achievements.
Broomwood FC is another example, founded in 1988 by a few Dads on Wandsworth Common they are now FA chartered and have over 1,000 members. For the kids and parents involved it plays a huge part in their lives. We all know what a positive thing sport is – particularly for children. To play a part in helping these amazing clubs to keep going is something we are seriously proud of.
Then we have the schools – it’s not called Nappy Valley for nothing! If we were forced to choose one reason over and above all others as to why people come here, it would be the schools. We have made it our priority to support our amazing state schools wherever we can, whenever we can and we currently sponsor four state primary schools in our areas and we are now extremely proud to add Bolingbroke Academy as a partner.
From day one we were committed to contributing to our community. It is a commitment we stand by today.
Founders and Directors James and Megan Vickers write
Dear All,
Four Sides London are delighted to be a Bolingbroke Academy community partner. This partnership aligns with the four pillars of our business: our team, our space, our services and our community. We are so privileged to be part of the Northcote community and all of us at Four Sides London recognise the importance of health in family life. The demand on our bodies and minds are clear. The juggle of school pick-ups, after school clubs, work deadlines, family dinners, weekend sport, adventurous holidays. These are all great things – and it’s good, if not essential, to be fit for life!
Four Sides London are physiotherapists, specialists in musculoskeletal health and fitness and experts in movement and strength. Founded in 2017 and run by husband and wife, Megan and James - whilst also doing the family juggle. Megan is a published author on Women’s and musculoskeletal health. James has worked in elite sport and has over a decade of Harley Street physiotherapy experience. They have a five star google rated team ready to get you out of pain and build your musculoskeletal foundations.
Four Sides London has four complementing, interlinked services to maximise your movement:
Physiotherapy for musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction
Women’s health for pre and post-natal health and strength through the changes of life
Pilates, including reformer Pilates for strength, control and flexibility
Strength & conditioning (S&C) for health, sports and performance
All of the physiotherapists at Four Sides London are experienced in the assessment and treatment of musculoskeletal pain and have referral links
to the best medical professionals London has to offer. Whether in a class or in a physio session our aim is to provide exercise and treatment that is specific to you. Our sessions are therefore tailored to your goals, your pain and your exercise experience.
Four Sides London runs small group (4 people) mat pilates, reformer pilates, S&C, pre & post-natal classes six days a week in our smart air-conditioned studio. If you’re in pain then start with physio to regain pain-free movement and to highlight why your pain has developed. Your physio will prescribe exercises to prevent injury reoccurrence - this is where the classes come into their own. The classes are physio-led and incorporate exercises that are designed to activate and build key muscles to correct your target areas and imbalances. They’re fun and motivating and provide an opportunity for you to engage with others in our wonderful community.
We want you fit for life, whatever that looks like for you. After all pain-free movement is essential for our long-term physical and mental health and we are dedicated to making this worth investing in.
MOVE, FEEL, LIVE STRONGER
And finally….
Here are some fundraisers which are no cost or very low cost but can make a big difference!
p6
Does your company have a matched fundraising scheme?
We’re a registered charity so that opens up a number of external fundraising opportunities. Does your employer have a matching scheme? Many do, especially larger companies. If you’re not sure, ask your HR department. We received £1000 in matched funding for our quiz night thanks to organiser Rob Williams and Barclays.
Companies will often donate to match your time given even if just an hour or two. You don’t need to be an event organiser or significant donor and you don’t need to be one of the big bosses either. The schemes are open to all employees equally.
We have collated a list of potential donors but you should check directly with your company too as schemes frequently change.
We’d be very happy to provide any necessary information to support an application.
If you are taking on a demanding personal challenge this year would you consider fundraising for Bolingbroke?
In April our vice principal Mr Rye is running the London Marathon in aid of Bolingbroke Academy and so is PA co-chair Tanya!
Why not set yourself a goal and raise money for Bolingbroke in the process? We’ll provide you with all the information and support you need to channel that sponsorship into the school’s Butterfly Garden re-build project.
Get in touch to chat about your ideas.
Free donations with easyfundraising
Once you are registered, whenever you shop online 1000s of your favourite retailers will donate to Bolingbroke PA. That’s totally free money for the school!
It’s completely free and super-easy to sign up then just click through to the retailer of your choice via easyfundraising to get the free donations. The pennies soon add up and Bolingbroke PA has raised over £7k through easyfundraising to date.
Don’t forget to download the donation reminder on your device to make sure you don’t miss a penny! It all add up to several thousand pounds of donations!
Did you know you can win cash every month with our 50:50 Club lottery?
To ensure your children no longer have any lost property, please label
everything! If you purchase any labels from STIKINS, the school gets 30% on all
Sales when you use the code: 36476 at checkout
Clothes Name Labels. Stick On School Name Labels, Name Tags: Stikins ®
.
Win cash prizes and donate to the school when you join our 50:50 club. It’s a kind of lottery with monthly draws. The more people who participate, the bigger the prize!
Sign up before the 20th of the month to join the draw. Click the button to find out how, the date of the next draw and who has won this month’s prize!
That’s all for this newsletter
Thank you so much for your interest and support!
Please follow us on social media #bolingbrokepa and get in touch any time