Give gifts to foodbank not us, say teachers
TEACHERS at a primary school want parents planning to buy them Christmas gifts to give to a foodbank instead.
Becky Wood, head at Parklee Community School in Atherton, is encouraging parents to make donations to Atherton and Leigh Foodbank.
In a letter she said: “Christmas is nearly upon us and although it is one of our favourite times of the year in school it can be incredibly stressful for parents/carers.
“After chatting to staff we would like to take the opportunity to say while we are incredibly grateful for gifts we would like to do something different this year and ask you not to buy us gifts.
“Instead we would love you to donate an item to the foodbank – you can bring this into school in the last week and we can take some children and pass them over to families who may not be able to buy in all the extra goodies this year.”
Miss Wood explained why staff took the decision.
She said: “A lot of parents are really struggling and actually we know that what’s spent on a box of chocolates for us, could be a Christmas present that a child might not get. We have an awful lot of families using the foodbank and buying gifts for us is just an extra stress they don’t need.”
As well as distributing foodbank vouchers to parents, the Wardour Street school is also a collection point for the Mission Christmas Cash for Kids charity appeal, which families there also benefit from.
Becky added: “The number of families struggling here is more than we’ve ever had before. So when we’re asking for nativity costumes, Christmas jumper days and donations for this and that, we just felt we needed to have a bit of perspective and not put parents under so much pressure.
“We have lots of staff and in some of the early years classes they can have five or six adults sometimes and the children want to get something for each of them.
“Hopefully this will give something back to the children and a simple homemade thank you card to us would be much more appreciated.”
Atherton and Leigh Foodbank said the ‘lovely’ gesture would be ‘a big help to the local community.’