Giving Back to Springfield School
It’s the time of year when individuals and businesses give back to the community by fundraising for children to ensure they have access to essential resources, from health and well-being services, to help alleviating effects of poverty.
Helping a Local School
This year we wanted to reach out to a local school to give back to some children in the local community. Springfield School in Crewe is a local school to us that caters for children between the ages of 4 and 19 with severe learning difficulties, and there are several reasons why we picked this school.
The first reason was the fact that the school is a fantastic school that takes care of the children that attend, helping to transform their lives and make academic progress in a learning environment that is positive and caters to their specific needs.
The second reason we chose Springfield is that one of our employees, Adam has been working here since September 2020 and has been in paid employment since January 2021, receiving a pay rise for outstanding effort, becoming an integral part of the team in the packing department in the warehouse. Adam participated in the Springboard Project, which combined learning at Springfield with work experience in the packing department at Thermmark, over time becoming a key member of the team. Adam’s unique attributes enabled him to take on the role as his own, performing the task better than anyone else.
You can read more and even see a video about Adam’s time at Thermmark. Click here for more information.
The playground marking we wanted to provide was an Emoji Stepper – a product we hadn’t made before. The idea of the marking is simple – to provide children that have trouble communicating with a way to express their feelings on the playground.
When we contacted the school to see if they would be interested in working with us this year, they responded quickly, and were very enthusiastic about the proposal. Laura Armitage, the Head of Sixth Form at the school said the school would be delighted to receive the marking, writing to us, “Oh the Thermmark team do it again – you are all amazing!”. Headteacher Lisa Hodgkison also said she thought that the pupils would get a lot of use out of it at playtime.
We went to the school to install it on the 19th November, and the staff helped to pick the best location on the playground for the marking, choosing somewhere that the pupils could use it on the way into school each day. After installation was completed, a few members of the school staff commented and told us how good it looked. The Springboard Project posted on their Facebook page later that day about how much the students are already enjoying using the marking to explore feelings – which is exactly what we had hoped for!
DIY SOS Big Build
Our sister company, Grassmats Ltd helped out for Children in Need this year. They provided some grass mats for a playground transformation on DIY SOS Big Build, at the St Michael’s Youth Project in Hull. The DIY SOS team put together new play areas, kitchen and cooking areas, adventure playgrounds, and more at the site back in September, and Grassmats helped to supply safety surfacing for the grass below the playground equipment, helping to keep people safe whilst playing on the adventure playgrounds.
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The show was featured on BBC One last week, and we recommend you watch it if you haven’t seen it yet! You can learn more about the project here.