Charities

As a living, active and willing Church School, charity lies at the core of our moral code at St Bede's. We know that helping others is part of the life and convictions of every Christian - and it is no accident that this spirit of human empathy runs through the best parts of various world religions.  The Bible reminds us in several places that we must support others with courage and purpose - Deuteronomy 12.11 urges us to 'Give freely to the poor and needy in your land’ while Hebrews 13:16 reminds us: ‘Do not forget to do good, and share with others.’ Even the Metaphysical poet and Theologian John Donne extorts: 'No man is an island, entire of itself [...] I am involved in mankind.'  

By seriously considering how we as a Christian community can make as positive an impact on our local community and beyond, St Bede's students and staff work together to determine, debate and organise the charitable events we must take part in, how far we can go to 'reach' the dispossessed in our society, but also how to reimagine the words 'neighbour', 'poor', 'needy' and the 'other'. Currently, we are exploring how to do practical hands-on charitable engagement with a swathe of local charities. Our students often draw on their own experiences and challenges, both joyful and painful, to determine which charities to support, so we have supported great charities like Christian Aid, Arts and Minds (a local mental health charity), Maggie’s Cancer Care, MAGPAS and many others.

In the past year, we have held ever-popular non-uniform days and donated £948 to CAFOD and £1,122 to the Cambridge Churches Homelessness Project.

In addition, we collected toys for the foodbank at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Arbury so that the children of the families who use the foodbank could have presents at Christmas.

We also created and stuffed hampers with goodies in our forms and raffled them to raise money for Addenbrookes Charitable Trust.  We raised £330.50.

There is, we know, no shame in gaining pleasure from helping others or in receiving help and solace from others and the thankyou letter we received from the Church of the Good Shepherd was heart-warming:

Thanks to the great generosity of pupils, parents and staff at your school, we have been able to distribute gifts to dozens of children who would otherwise have gone without this Christmas.

St Bede's invaluable Parents’, Teachers’ and Friends’ Association (PTFA) also work extremely hard to raise charitable monies to support bespoke in-school initiatives: we have a giant chess set on the lawn thanks to them; earphones and aprons for our students, piney Christmas trees - much of these monies are raised through cheery events like ceilidhs or brain puzzling quizzes. Please see our dedicated PTFA page for more information.

Please don't hesitate to nominate causes close to your heart or get in touch to support our endeavours! Please email fross@stbedes.cambs.sch.uk or sbarton@stbedes.sch.uk.

Freerice

You can start now, and all you have to do is click on the link (below) to Freerice, an educational trivia game that helps you get smarter while making a difference for people around the world. Every question you answer correctly raises 10 grains of rice for the World Food Programme (WFP) to support its work saving and changing lives around the world.