Parents at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Hunslet have taken the initiative and set up the Friends of St Joseph’s, a PTFA (Parents, Teachers and Friends Association).
Lisa Derret, one of the parents leading the group explained that they wanted to give something back to the school. They launched in March after a few months of preparation. Their first project is to raise funds for a minibus as the school doesn’t currently have one.
The group have run after school tuck shops, disco, ice cream sale, coffee morning as well having a stall at Hunslet Festival. They are organising a Leavers Party for the Year 6 moving to secondary school this summer.
Now they have been nominated for the Tesco Stronger Starts fund and need support from shoppers to vote for them with their blue tokens. You can vote at Tesco Metro stores across the city centre as well as Leeds Dock and Dewsbury Road and the big store at Seacroft.
Lisa explained why shoppers should support them:
“We live our virtues and when you give so much it’s nice to receive a little bit of help as well. We want to lead by example, so if we give and we support hopefully they will support us.
“The minibus will make such a difference to the school. We’ve got a big percentage of SEND (Special educational Needs and Disabled) children that are missing out on events because we can’t get them there.”
Teacher Mrs Elwen added:
“It will save the parents money as well. To fund a trip is so expensive the school often subsidises costs, but moving into next year the budgets are cut even further we can’t afford it, so by doing this we can support the parents to make sure that the children still have an enriching education.”
The Friends of St Joseph’s are an independent organisation and decide themselves where the funds they raise go, but they work very much in partnership with the school.
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