Academic Clubs and Activities News

News: Surval Charity Report 2018/19

12 June 2019

We are very proud to have donated CHF7300 to charity this year...

It has been another wonderfully successful year for Surval’s Charity Committee. Our Charity programme has strong links with both Social Enterprise and Language & Culture, with exciting opportunities for the students to develop the skills acquired in Business Studies lessons, and to interact with members of the local community, improving their French as they do so. Charity at Surval is about developing the spirit of charity in our lives, a mindset which looks charitably at those in our countries, whilst also looking outwards to see what we can do to help others, as citizens of a global world. 

Locally, our students volunteer for Cartons du Coeur and L’étape, organisations which help provide food to local people in need;  at Le SPA du Léman, a local dog shelter, where our girls walk the rescued dogs; and at Le Byron, a residential home for the Elderly, where the girls talk, play games and do arts and crafts with the men and women who live here. Through this volunteer work, the girls give the gift of their time, and cherish the opportunity to speak French and learn more about the local culture.

Surval supports several Non-Profit Organisations. This year, through a broad range of student-led Social Enterprise fundraising activities, we have made donations to Téléthon Suisse, Habitat for Humanity, The Florence Nightingale Foundation, a Girls' Education Fund, La Maison du Père, Terre des Hommes, L’étape and Save the Children. We are very proud to have donated a total of CHF7300 to charity this year. In addition to this, Surval students have donated textbooks and school material to orphans in Romania through La Maison du Père programme, and clothes, shoes, bed linen and toiletries to local people in need, again with L’étape.

Through this combination of fundraising, donation and volunteering, we touch the lives of people in both Switzerland and around the world. And nowhere is this better exemplified than in our work with Habitat for Humanity. Not only did our students raise funds to support this vital organization, but, in March, a group of Surval girls travelled to Kenya to build a house for a family in need with Habitat for Humanity. 

Finally, the Charity Committee has also organized several educational visits and events: as part of Téléthon, a group of girls visited ASRIMM in Yverdon, where they were able to learn more about how this organization helps people with neuromuscular diseases; as part of our International Day of the Girl Child celebrations, Gillian Rolet from the Varkey Foundation delivered an Assembly about how this Foundation works to provide education to disadvantaged girls in countries such as Ghana; also as part of the Day of the Girl Child celebrations, a group of students took part in an online Girl Talk with girls from different schools in the US. We have also had student-led Assemblies on Charity and the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. 

On behalf of the Charity Committee, our Charities Coordinator, Madame Spigarelli, would like to thank everyone who has been involved with Charity at Surval this year – "It is inspiring to see the support from staff and students, and to hear our girls talk about the impact their charity work has had on them." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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