The Key to Happiness: Giving to Toys and Teens Appeal

Our senior school student-led charity group, Amicus, has been gathering toys and gifts for young people across Berkshire in support of Reading Family Aid’s annual appeal.  The Toys and Teens initiative enables the school community to give presents to children less fortunate than themselves by delivering new or as new toys, gadgets, clothing and toiletries to the collection point in Old School.

The appeal was launched in Collect on Monday 25^th November and since then the piles of pressies has been growing and growing!

Amicus co-ordinator and the School’s charity lead, Pablo Gorostidi Perez, commented: “It’s important for all of us to realise that we may be living in a bubble and that around us there are a lot of people who are in need of these toys. The key to happiness is to give, not to get and I believe that the fact they can give these presents will make them feel better so in that sense it’s a bit of a selfish thing to do!

Maiya (Year 11) enthused: “The Toys and Teens Appeal is so important as so many children go without at Christmas. It makes me feel like I am part of the community both at School level and within Reading.” Ryan (Year 11) agreed, adding: “I think being a part of Amicus is about being able to give back and support the local community, to get engaged in fundraising and charity events. It’s a very nice choice for my time after school, I want to spend my time in my co-curricular activity, outside my academics, giving back to people.”

Pablo explained that the Toys and Teens charity collection is just one aspect of the work undertaken by the group: “What we have done this year is to put together the Amicus people and the representatives for the House charity efforts to create synergies. For example, Amicus are all involved organising the bake sales for the Houses and the other way round when we organised the collection for toys at Christmas or the selling of the Valentine’s roses in February, they will be there for us at the peaks of activity. By doing things this, we have a better idea what is happening across the school for Amicus, the Houses and for some subjects so we can organise events without overlapping. We have around 14 students every Tuesday at our meeting which is a big number but this is really working as we can share out the responsibilities.”