Each year at Abingdon Prep a charity is chosen to support and a number of fundraising events are held. Over the past few years, the school has raised in excess of £80,000 for a selection of worthwhile causes including Helen and Douglas House, Medical Detection Dogs, The Footsteps Foundation, Riding for the Disabled, The Air Ambulance and Be Free YC. Everybody in the school community gets involved in the fundraising and the collective efforts over the past few years have been extremely impressive.

During the 2022/23 academic year, we have decided to support three small charities based in Oxfordshire. The Oxford Food Hub, which redistributes surplus food, preventing it from being thrown away and entering landfill. The food is donated to food banks, homeless shelters and charities who create meals for redistribution. Soundabout, is a local charity that uses music to empower and unlock the potential of people with severe and profound learning disabilities. Our third charity is The Abingdon Bridge. It provides help and support for young people struggling with their mental health.

We hold many fundraising events throughout the year, including a charity-themed home clothes day, a silver coin trail and sponsored swim. In addition, our Year 7 pupils take part in a Dragon’s Den style challenge and create their own companies and as budding entrepreneurs they turn over very impressive profits, 100% of which is donated to our charity – clearly philanthropic entrepreneurs! However, the most popular event has been The Great APS Bake Off. The children show some very competent culinary skills when cooking independently at school but the most enthusiasm is always reserved for the tasting.

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We continue to support The Gatehouse in Oxford, who provide vulnerable and homeless adults with food, warmth and company for a couple of hours each day. Pre-Prep donate their produce from the Harvest Festival and as a whole school, we have donated presents of warm clothes and chocolates at Christmas. In partnership with the Nasio Trust and Abingdon Rotary Club we also sponsor four children from Kenya through their education.

In addition, each one of our four houses chooses a charity. The children give presentations on their suggested charities and the house vote on their preferred charity. They then take responsibility for deciding on and running a fundraising activity during the summer term, previous year examples have been a chocolate tombola and cake sale. Past charities have included Thinking Of Oscar, Cancer Research, WaterAid, Headway and Nepal Earthquake Fund.