Latymer Upper is the only school working with Care4Calais

(l-r) Latymer Upper School’s Charities Co-ordinator and physics teacher, and Chiswick residents,Toby Brisley,Christian Jouhar andLuke Kerton-Johnson, pictured with Clare Moseley – founder of Care4Calais

Latymer’s pupils' concern over the refugee crisis in Calais has led to them becoming the only school to be involved in Care4Calais, a charity that works with refugee families. A number of students from Chiswick have been involved in the frequent trips to France to help the charity.

The school started their relationship with the Care4Calais charity last summer, with 15 students and 2 staff. Since then they have sent 90 pupils in four working trips to work in the warehouse in Calais, sorting and distributing clothing and food to refugees – the last group out returned last month and the next group will go during the Easter Holidays.

The first three day working trip was in June last year, but since then they have been taking place every half term/end of term break.

Pupils work in a Care4Calais warehouse during mornings, helping with anything from cleaning and sorting a haircutting station to organising donated shoes and clothes into the correct sizes. In the afternoon they are split into groups and work on distributing clothes and food, for example one group may go to Verrotier and one to Dunkirk, then on Saturday the groups are switched around, and on Sunday one group will go to the other parts of the area where refugees are in need of the donations. At these locations, pupils distribute the items they have prepped in the morning and talk, or play football, cricket or volleyball with some of the refugees.

Students working with the charity in Calais

The schools asks students to raise £100 each if they are coming on the trip, however many have far exceeded this target. With gift aid, the school have currently raised around £10,000 for Care4Calais from various fundraising activities.hool, taken trips to the London Migration Film Festival and a Migrateful cookery class.

As part of their Service Learning Lower sixth students volunteer for various community projects which include refugee work - the West London Welcome centre for refugees; teaching ESOL to refugee students at West London College; working with Shepherd’s Bush Families Project which includes refugee families. Latymerians also wrote ‘Hannah and Halil’ – a book on refugee families produced for young children.

April 1, 2019