We are delighted to honour the following students for achieving the Jack Petchey award throughout the year. The award is designed to recognise, reward and celebrate the achievements of young people. The scheme is really special because students are nominated by their peers for the award and the winner is selected by a panel from our Student Parliament. The award winners also receive a small grant of £200 to reinvest in the school community. Joel Chapman, Vivien Guiloff, Pandora Molteno, Lily Sheldon, Tshepo Raphael–Khara, Ellie Jackson, David Ross, Josh Bluestone, Jay Sands.
We are also thrilled and proud to honour this year’s Yoni Jesner award winners. The award is presented to students who do 20 hours of volunteering in the year. In Pirkei Avot we are taught that It is not what one says, but rather what one does, that makes all the difference in the world. We are extremely proud of our involvement with the Yoni Jesner award and the wide variety of volunteering placements we have undertaken throughout the year in order to make our difference in the world.
At JCoSS we are lucky enough to have many volunteering opportunities within our own school. Our Manna from Heaven programme sees students prepare delicious food for a local homeless shelter every week. We host Norwood’s annual Chanukah and Purim parties which are staffed by JCoSS students and some students have the opportunity to mentor other students within the Pears Special Resource Provision.
Other JCoSS award winners volunteered in the Jewish community, in our local synagogues, youth clubs and youth movements. We volunteered at Norwood, Jewish Blind and Disabled, Mitzvah Day, Gefiltefest, UJIA, Gift, Tikkun, Jewish Care, Maccabi, the New North London Synagogue Asylum Seekers drop in and Camp Simcha. One student spent her 20 hours teaching a member of the Association of Jewish Refugees how to use her computer. We also volunteered in the wider community – at the North London Hospice Shop, Celia Hammond Animal Trust, Chickenshed Theatre, Barnet Cancerlink, Darfur Together, Scouts, Brownies and Barnet Homeless Shelter. And some of us spent our volunteering time making and organising sales of bracelets, cakes, strawberries and more in order to raise funds for our chosen charities.
This Year’s award recipients are: Lia Avigdor, Hannah Bentwood, Annie Berg, Miriam Clifton, Gabriel Cooke, Poppy Flack, Gessica Grew, Bethany Kinchuck, Adam Lee, Rachel Leveney (Silver Award – 50 hours of volunteering), Beth Lewis, Ben McCombe, Octavia Molteno, Robyn Mydat, Benji Nathan (Gold Award – 100 hours of volunteering), Gemma Newman, Ella Nourmand, Jacob Prevezer, Louis Rhodes, Adam Robinson, Imogen Sanis, Lily Sheldon (Silver Award), Simone Silver (Silver Award), Eliana Stern, Alexa Sussman, Alice Thompson, Gaby Vides (Silver Award), Ruby Werth, Rebecca Wilcockson.
IJE celebrated Shavuot this year at Jewish Care’s Lady Sarah Cohen House where a group of students showed off their musical talents with the wonderful support of Ms Humphrey. JCoSS has also been busy fundraising as part of Charity week, raising money for our chosen school charities with a wide range of activities. We were delighted to welcome the MyIsrael charity’s Musicians of Tomorrow project to school for a fantastic lunchtime concert and were all delighted with the first aid kits given out by Magen David Adom – our school’s chosen Israel charity. Our chosen local charity and Jewish charity are Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice and Camp Simcha respectively and they are both interested in both our funds and our time, and during charity week students had the opportunity to neet representatives from the charities and find out about opportunities for volunteering in both of these wonderful organisations.
Finally – Mazel Tov to Year 8 who celebrated their collective B’nei Mitzvah in school with comedy, music, dancing and of course food! They also took the time to think about moving into Jewish adulthood and to make pledges and commitments as to how they will honour this transition.
