Young Leaders' Winter Walk 2025

Sponsored walk raises over £2800 for the Royal Star & Garter home

It was a privilege to take part in our Young Leaders’ Winter Walk for the Royal Star & Garter last Saturday. The way in which the boys have responded to their charity fundraising has been inspirational..! So far they have raised over £2,800, which is approximately what we used to raise during the whole of RAG Week (for those with long memories..!), said Headteacher Mr Smith.

Twenty pf the Southborough Young Leaders programmes and teachers visit the Star and Garter charity’s Surbiton home regularly and together they took part in the 10km London walk alongside 600 others recently, initially hoping to raise £1500.

Royal Star and Garter is a charity providing specialist care to veterans and their partners living with disability and dementia, with homes in Surbiton, Solihull and High Wycombe.

Headteacher Mr Smith said ”It’s about values. Our values are really coherent, we look after people and are respectful of people’s contribution in society,  and help the community. The money is only part of it, what we’re trying to do is raise awareness, generate publicity, and give the students a sense of achievement and agency.”

Pupils in the Young Leader programme have been visiting the Royal Star and Garter home as part of their collaboration, playing bingo or skittles and singing songs with the residents.

Mr Smith continued “The students absolutely love it. Young people generally get quite bad press and teenage boys in particular, but they absolutely love the opportunity to be caring, help others and take responsibility.”

Mr Iles, governor of the school, used to take pupils to visit the homes, play board games, and tell stories. He said: “Their lives in significant ways were very different to the lives of these boys, some of them don’t normally meet people of 80, 90 years of age.

“Many of these boys would read about the world events and conflicts that residents have lived through , and some of them also came to the school to speak about them.”

“The idea is to try to help these boys, aged between 12 and 14 years of age, make positive contributions to the school life and wider community so that hopefully they end up with positive outcomes.”

Many thanks go to Mr Edwards for organising the programme and event, and to Mr Iles, Mr Smith and Mr Swinchin Rew for  taking time to accompany the pupils.