Benenden recently held its first ever Giving Day across an action-packed 36-hour window, encompassing a range of events and activities designed to raise awareness of and money for the Be the Change bursary and partnerships initiative.
A Giving Day is a time-limited fundraising campaign involving the whole School community; students, parents (current and former), Seniors, Honorary Seniors, Friends of the School, and staff. For a limited time, members of this community had the opportunity for their gifts to be doubled, all because of the kindness of a Patron who generously offered to match donations.
In the lead up to and during the Giving Day, students competed in a number of inter-House challenges to unlock vital funds towards Be the Change – aiming to triple the number of Benenden’s bursary recipients.
An inter-House battle of the bands involved students picking up instruments they’d never used before to try and recreate popular hits, while the Partnerships Pentathlon had Houses rowing, cycling, swimming, running and walking to accumulate the equivalent distance in mileage between Benenden School and each of its partners.
Houses also took part in the Sustainability Challenge , encouraging them to be more conscious of and to reduce their energy and water consumption (as well as their wider carbon footprint) through a range of small initiatives, such as turning off switches and not leaving devices on standby, reducing deliveries and parcels ordered, and not leaving the tap running!
Benenden’s first Giving Day presented an opportunity for the School community to come together to provide further openings for future generations of Benenden students, pupils in our partner schools, members of our local community, and our society as a whole.