Community Service
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Community Service is an integral and much-valued part of The Perse School Enrichment Programme. Volunteers are free to select an activity from a number of choices pre-organised by the school or to organise their own activities subject to approval by the CS management team. There are 109 pupil volunteers this academic year, engaged in a wide variety of activities.
This year, 20 Sixth Form pupils have volunteered to assist staff at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Volunteers in the Lower Sixth work in a number of non-clinical departments including the library, whilst Upper Sixth members assist on the wards. As well as benefiting patients and helping staff, pupils who intend to follow a career in medicine gain valuable experience in the day-to-day running of a large NHS hospital. Other CS volunteers help in local charity shops, in charitable institutions such as Blue Cross, local scouts and Girls’ Brigade troops, in residential homes for the elderly, in the domestic dwellings of senior citizens, in local primary schools, amongst many others.
As well as helping specific groups and individuals within the local community, CS also helps the school community in such ventures as the newly-formed Perse Organic Garden. An Environmental Group also helps the wider community by helping to transform former wastelands into sites where people can enjoy an improved natural habitat for plants, birds, animals and insects. Our group of 12 volunteers help to create bio-diversity through tree and undergrowth thinning, the introduction of nesting boxes to encourage bird settlement, clearing ponds, and many other beneficial projects.
Within our Community Art CS programme pupils learn a broad range of artistic techniques and approaches before taking these skills out into the local community. This could take the form of working alongside individual pupils in various local schools, collaborative projects such as mural painting, or creating artwork for public places.
In curriculum terms, CS provides its members with the opportunity to acquire and develop specific skills in helping members of the public less fortunate than themselves. An important by-product (but still only of secondary importance in educational terms) is the great deal of good CS has achieved over the years in making the lives of many people in Cambridge and the surrounding area easier and (hopefully) happier. It is easy to forget that the primary function of CS is to encourage the formation of skills and values in our pupils which will help them to grow into better, well-rounded and more tolerant citizens in the future.
Dr Bill Stevenson