Welcome to My School

Project Summary

Volunteers from the Home Office worked with Primary School children to create welcome books in several languages for new children and parents who join the school.

Background

Many children arrive in Westminster schools with little or no English, in strange surroundings, overawed by the change in their lives. Children can feel like an 'outsider', which can lead to more serious issues. The 'Welcome to My School' project was developed so that a volunteer team could have a rewarding and moving experience whilst helping to create an environment where EAL (English as Second Language) children will feel that their mother-tongue is celebrated by adults within their school environment.

Project details

The Home Office’s General Executive Board (GEB), a team of eight, was invited to work in pairs, with three children each. Each team was assigned to create a hand-made book in a specific language – Portuguese, Albanian and Arabic.
They began by going around the school with the children, taking photographs. Then, together they planned the layout of the book, putting together printed photos, drawings and texts (the texts had been prepared by parents beforehand in the particular language) to produce the final book.
Time & Talents for Westminster brought together Home Office Volunteers, Primary School staff, children and parents as well as the expertise of Community Service Volunteers in order to deliver this project.
This project has been replicated a number of times in different schools with other employer partners involved.

° Home Office General Executive Board had unique team building experience working with one another in new environment
° Skill development: communication skills developed through collaborating with children, school staff and other organisations to a tight deadline
° Legacy: volunteers gained experience-based insight into relevant policy issues

° Primary School students had an incredible creative experience working together with adults on a serious project
° Parents had the opportunity to get involved with the school activity, and using their mother-tongue
° Legacy: Three heart-warming, hand-made welcome-books were produced for newcomer children and parents

Quotes

Home Office volunteer: "The highlight was being organised by the children and getting a result!"
Home Office volunteer: "Realising I found 1.5 children for 1.5 hours really hard work – and teachers have to do it all the time with far more children for far more hours – it really tested my negotiating skills!"
Home Office volunteer: "Good to spend time together in a completely different context building our team working skills"
School Arts Coordinator: “Being an inner city school we have many challenging children in classes with emotional and behavioural problems. For them it is a very special chance to have someone with them who is not an authority figure; someone listening to them and encouraging them, giving them positive attention and raising their self-esteem.”
Opp ID: WST 3337

"The project has great potential for the future, for other groups to work on in other languages in the same school or in different schools"

Volunteer, Home Office

Get involved

Get in touch with us; we can help you organise a similar project in a local Westminster school

In action

Sir John Gieve, Home Office, designs the book in the school computer IT lab together with his team of students. Click here to see full photo set

The book: one example

The books are multi-lingual and designed as Welcome Books for new students in the school for whom English is not their first language.

Skills Shared

Inter-organisational, cross-sector joint project development
Negotiating skills for both adults and children
Creative skills
Cultural symbols and significances shared

Challenges

Getting so many things done in a short space of time
Planning groupings/teams

(Author: )

Articles in this group

DECC Climate Change Workshop for people with Learning Disabilities
DECC staff run Climate Change Workshop for people with Learning Disabilities to improve confidence in engaging with new client groups whilst hugely benefiting the charity with project evaluation (Author: )

Football match with migrant mentees
Twelve Department for Transport (DfT) staff volunteered to participate in the tournament, and fundraised refreshment and travel costs for the mentees (Author: )

1-2-1 mock-interviews for 180 sixth form students
Paddington Academy wanted to hold a mock interview day for their one hundred and eighty Sixth Form students in order to improve confidence. Many will be going to work after leaving school. The school needed professional (Author: )

Role-play and 1-2-1 support at interactive employability workshop
Four staff from the Department for Transport (DfT) volunteered to develop a half day interactive employability workshop for ELATT's Refugee Women’s Project (Author: )

Assessing a local mentoring and befriending scheme for people with learning disabilities
Seven members of the private secretarial team for Minister of Health Anna Soubry helped a Westminster charity in assessing their learning disabilities mentoring and befriending programme (Author: )

DH staff run 'Raising Aspirations + Goal Setting' workshop for teenagers
Department of Health staff ran a ‘Raising Aspirations and Goal Setting’ workshop for 120 Year 12 students; providing insight into life at the DH, Q+A sessions and policy workshops (Author: )

Case Studies
Read more about the work of the Time and Talents partners and some of our innovative volunteering projects. (Author: )

British Land Community Day
Some 163 members of British Land’s Head Office team took part in the company’s first Community Day (Author: )

Business customer and strategy team volunteer at St Augustine’s High School
The Business Customer and Strategy senior leadership team (SCS) at HMRC spent the day volunteering their time in a local Westminster Secondary School to deliver a tax workshop to sixth form students (Author: )

Press and Promotion Workshop
“Making Headlines” workshop delivered by Reputation Inc. hosted at Conservative party headquarters and The Guardian. (Author: )

Team Variety Volunteering @ DH
Giles Wilmore quality division organised an away day called the Christmas challenge 2011.Projects include: christmas hampers and social activities for the ederly, employability and healthy sessions for young people. (Author: )

Mock interiews with homeless people@ DH
Partnership between the homeless charity and the DH. The DH team provides support and advises to homeless unemployed and those who have not work for a long time. Great opportunity to practise interviews and optimize chances to get a work. (Author: )

Volunteers encouragers @ DH
Initiative of DH volunteer staff forms a rota to help isolated and vulnerable people in art, craft and social activities. These activities help both team to socialize together and create strong synergies. More... (Author: )

Rememberance Day at DH
Children from local schools meet with armed force, event organised by the Department of Health. It was a great opportunity for students to understand the role of the British Defence Force and also a chance to express themselves on the Rememberance Day. (Author: )

Grow your own food in school
Volunteers supported teams of students to create a plan of what to grow in their new plastic bottle greenhouse, taking into account, seasons, growing conditions etc. (Author: )

Pitching simulation @ Microsoft
Volunteers from Microsoft - Advertising team welcomed sixth form students from a local Academy to their offices and facilitated the students to create their own pitch. (Author: )

Plastic bottle greenhouse @ local primary school
Department of Health volunteers helped get the whole school involved in collecting bottles and, together with 6-11 yr olds, built a Plastic Bottle Greenhouse during the school's Sustainability Week (Author: )

BlueBay volunteers provide I.T Training
An team from BlueBay volunteered their time to provide training in Office 2007 to a charity staff who had recently had it installed at their offices (Author: )

A-Level law students visit to Ministry of Justice
An interactive day filled with presentations, workshops and discussions with senior level policy makers and law-practitioners (Author: )

Cross-government task force support homeless charity with their client survey
Volunteers from the Home Office and HMRC support charity with client survey, from design, to interviews, to analysis of findings and report writing (Author: )

Work placement for person with mild learning disabilities
Two week work experience placement with the Department of Health for someone with mild learning disabilities (Author: )

Peer mentoring cross-sector relationship
Director of Strategy for Office for Disability issues (ODI) and the CEO of an advocacy charity were matched as part of an ongoing partnership between the two organisations. (Author: )

Six month secondment placement
Usha was seconded from Ministry of Justice to a small civil society organisation where she honed skills and confidence to start up her own company (Author: )

Financial capability project @ local primary school
Barclays volunteers ran the Barclays Money Skills programme supporting children to think about what they can do with money through fun, practical and engaging activities (Author: )

Policy team engage with day centre for older people
Staff from the Commission on Funding of Care and Support spent the day at a Day Centre for older people (Author: )

Construction Site visit by Land Securities
Volunteers from Land Securities showed students interested in construction and engineering around the building site of the new BBC headquarters (Author: )

Employability outreach for young people
Soft skills support for young people on social housing estate. Programme included: CV, Interview, professional skills and etiquette and enterprise. (Author: )

Employability Mentoring Project
Mentoring Project delivered by DfT in Partnership with South Westminster Renewal Partnership (Author: )

Anti-Bullying DVD, Launch Event
Office for Disability Issues partnered up with a local charity supporting adults with learning disabilities to help launch an anti-bullying DVD (Author: )

Three year sustainable partnership
Three year partnership involving a number of projects including: garden renovations; trips for children and families; pro bono space planning; and funding. (Author: )

The Apprentice
Apprentice style project which resulted in a two weeks' work experience for one of the young candidates (Author: )

Garden make-over
Aegis staff volunteered to revamp and do up the gardens of a Community Day Centre so that clients and staff would enjoy the gardens free from weeds, overgrown hedges and rubbish. (Author: )

Welcome to My Community
Volunteers from DfE engaged with the parents from a Westminster Primary School through open consultation and discussion to encourage them to become more of a part of the school community (Author: )

Employability Workshop
Spencer Stuart (recruitment company) went to Paddington Academy to conduct employability workshops there. (Author: )

Storytelling without books
Storytelling without books at a Westminster Primary school with a group of senior Barclays managers. (Author: )

Christmas Lunch Project
Jonathan from the Home Office spent a day volunteering, read his description here (Author: )