This year I launched a Philosophy Ambassadors programme designed for a select group of students who wanted to help on Open Evenings, enhance subject advertisement, provide subject mentoring for other students and extra support through study sessions. One idea discussed was organising and running a charity event. Now this is something that I have never done with my students, mainly because I could never think of a way of raising money that was different from the usual fundraising. But loving a challenge, we ran with the idea of a charity event and brainstormed lots of ideas of how to go about it.

The charity we selected was the Yorkshire Coast Sight Support, who support those with sight loss and visual impairment across Scarborough and the wider area. This local charity has a dedicated team of staff and volunteers who organise social groups and meetings and offer assisted technology and equipment essential for people with sight impairments. We decided that for our event rather than collecting money, we would collect donations (e.g. clothes, dvds, books, toiletries, children’s toys, games) for the Sight Support charity shop. After weeks of preparations including designing posters, contacting local schools and informing parents, we launched the event at the start of January. I am very pleased to say that over a three-week period the students collected over 30 bin liners and 20 boxes full of donations to sell in the shop.

We also put a number of collection pots around college including the staffroom, canteen and library. In total we raised over £200.00 for the Guide Dogs as well. I would like to thank everyone who donated and enabled this event to be such a success. Also a huge well done to the Ambassadors for all their hard work!