Dear Parents

For the last seven years we have been sending shoe-boxes full of Christmas gifts to the children of the Ukraine whom we help through Tony Budell and Philip Edmunds of British Humanitarian Aid.

This year, at the request of BHA, our shoeboxes are going to be different.  We have been asked to fill them with stationery, so that the children have enough biros, pencils and sharpeners, erasers, ink pens and cartridges, crayons, notebooks, paper, (metric) rulers, protractors, set-squares, staplers, paper-clips, ring-clip files, hole-punches etc. for their school work. The village schools in the Ukraine are chronically short of such items, and the children's education is being badly curtailed as a result.

The hope is that we might be able to make links with the schools who receive our boxes, since English is a very important subject in the curriculum, as the Ukraine tries to develop its overseas trade and commerce with the West.

So this year, I shall be circulating shoe-boxes to each class/form/tutor-group for filling with whatever stationery pupils can bring in.  (I shall also provide larger boxes for exercise books and paper for each collection-point.)  As in previous years, "used but serviceable" items are completely acceptable - this is not a call to clear out the stationery department of W H Smith or Coleman's!  Familis can decide whether they want to fill their own shoe-box and bring it in or contribute to a communal class/form box.

Our donation of £1 coins to assist with transport costs has always been greatly valued, and BHA would be delighted if the tradition could continue.  If pupils could bring in their coins when they bring in their stationery, that would be extremely helpful.  Similarly, there is still a great need for used but serviceable clothing, so please do keep sending in your filled black bin-liners (marked "BHA") and leaving them in the Chapel porch - one shipment was collected at half-term!

On behalf of the children of the Chernihiv region, thank you in anticipation for your continued generosity.

Best wishes

Rev. Martin Walker
School Chaplain