Pupils are reminded through our focus on Super Citizen, our citizenship superhero, that we need to consider people who are less fortunate than ourselves. As a local charity, the Croydon Refugee Day Centre (CRDC) is an ideal one for our community to support.
For over eight years, The Elmhurst Family have found ways to support the CRDC. The most significant contributions to the centre focus on our Harvest giving, where we work as a community to fill our minibus with items that the centre needs for the refugees that they are supporting.
As a community, we are amazingly generous with donations to the centre and each time we have managed to fill the minibus with essentials. The staff at the centre were overwhelmed by our generosity and the initiative is one we hope to continue for many years to come..
In the Autumn of 2021, the crisis in Afghanistan and Iraq meant that large numbers of refugees were arriving only in what they were wearing, without any other clothes. In the week before our donation drive alone, they welcomed 300 people who had just arrived in Croydon from overseas, of which 80 were children. As a result, they had been extremely busy giving out clothes parcels and so we responded to a request to donate clothes and, once again, filled our bus. Boys in Y6 supported staff in emptying the bus, ready for the clothes to be passed on to those in need.
Volunteering
Alongside the annual Harvest donation the team at CRDC sometimes need adult support too and volunteers from the Elmhurst community are often willing to lend a hand.
Not only is being a Super Citizen great for the pupils, it can also be a great thing for grown ups too!