Every year Hurstpierpoint College’s Senior School sends out three year groups, with staff, to do project work in the local vicinity as part of their Community Action Day initiative at the end of the summer term.
This year the college dispatched 470 pupils and 79 staff to 32 locations, to perform manual chores and maintenance work for charities and other worthy organisations. The community-oriented students, accompanied by dedicated members of staff, took up their mops, rakes, spades and trowels to participate in one of the college’s most valued annual traditions.
Projects ranged from tidying public footpaths, clearing back scrub on the South Downs and gardening in organic cooperatives to serving in elderly care centres and washing windows and minibuses. The college also sent a concert party to a care home and a gang show to a school for children with complex needs.
Locations and organisations in the immediate vicinity to benefit included the Millennium Gardens and allotments in the village, Paws and Claws Animal Rescue Service in Sayers Common and Age Concern in Hassocks.
This is one of a number of days in the year when Hurst College and its students gives something back to the local community in a more direct way.