Richard Huish students get into the spirit of giving back

Vocational Business students from the college hosted a number of fundraising events to raise more than £1,200 for Love Musgrove.

The charity helps support projects at Musgrove Hospital beyond what the NHS covers.

The second year students worked together to conduct charity events as part of their assessment of their event management module of their Extended Diplomas.

Course Manager, Sharon Williams commented “we are immensely proud of what they have achieved and during the stages of planning and conducting the events they have developed many skills that they will be able to transfer to future opportunities such as; confidence, customer service, contingency planning, budgeting and marketing.”

The first event was a Bingo and Raffle evening that was well attended by the local community.

For their events the students approached businesses to donate prizes and were delighted at the generous response they received.

On December 16, Dan Varley, community fundraiser for Love Musgrove visited the College to reveal to the students they had collectively raised over £1,200.

“I was so impressed with the teams of students and their event planning skills, especially having to deal with changing Covid restrictions!

"Donations of this size make an incredible difference to patients, their families and our colleagues at a time of extreme pressure, and will allow us to take that extra bit of care of them during the festive period."

Elsewhere, as part of the first EnRICH Day, students generously contributed to charity appeals through donations and many stepped forward to also contribute their time.

Forty-five students spent a day making up, and gift-wrapping hamper boxes for ‘Help Thy Neighbour’.

Help Thy Neighbour support families in Taunton who struggle financially keeping food on the table and with basic family needs.

The Christmas hampers contained a mixture of items from essential food and toiletries to Christmas treats and newly bought toys and the Huish team were delighted to support a charity that works so hard throughout the year to support the community.

The Sociology department also put a call out to students, this time to support Arc’s homeless shoebox appeal.

The Arc shoebox appeal supplies each Arc resident with a festive shoebox and each property with a Christmas hamper to make sure they do not miss out.

Huish students produced 124 gift-wrapped shoeboxes of goodies through a giant production line formed across the campus to pass the made-up boxes from their starting point to the minibus ready for delivery to Arc.