On Friday 2nd July, five colleagues from Aico volunteered at Woodside Primary School in Oswestry, Shropshire. The team spent the day redecorating the school’s Wellbeing Centre to provide a much-needed meeting space to support the general wellbeing of their students.
Woodside Primary School strive to ensure that their students are happy and confident through the provision of excellent support and facilities and dedicated teachers and governors.
Circumstances resulting from the current climate have led to a delay in the redevelopment of the Wellbeing Centre; as a Governor of the school, Aico’s Community Liaison, Jane Pritchard, has seen first-hand the urgent need for the Wellbeing Centre, in order to support children and their families with early help services.
Through Aico’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, Aico in the Community, their colleagues assisted the school by decorating the interior of the Wellbeing Centre. This helped to create an open and safe space that was suitable for immediate use, facilitating the crucial support many of their students require.
Claire Bennett, Headteacher at Woodside Primary School comments “Our school community saw the potential to develop this building into Woodside Wellbeing Centre, a bespoke space in which we can support children and their families in an early help context. However, recent price increases and limited availability on resources and contractors has meant a delay in the redevelopment of this building. In order to make use of this building as soon as possible, a team of volunteers from Aico very kindly stepped in to support us. We are so grateful to Jane and the Aico team for volunteering to come in and get the interior of the building painted. They have done a brilliant job and their hard work means we can start to make use of this space as soon as possible to support our children. A big thank you to the team of Aico volunteers from us all at Woodside School!”
Aico will continue to support Woodside Primary School throughout the summer break to make further improvements to the Wellbeing Centre and its outdoor surroundings.
Jane Pritchard says “As a governor of Woodside Primary School, I have seen first-hand the importance and need to provide a suitable environment in which students can be supported. We look forward to the Wellbeing Centre developing further soon, but hopefully this temporary refurb will help somewhat in easing the pressures of providing a suitable much needed space. My colleagues at Aico are looking forward to more days in which we can help by volunteering our time at the school.”
With the pandemic having a significant impact on fundraising and support to educational organisation and charities, Aico will continue to support their local communities through education, business enterprise, charity and volunteering.
To find out more about Aico in the Community, please visit: https://www.aico.co.uk/in-the-community/