📚  It all started with a sponsored run…

How a simple idea grew into over £6,000 raised, transformed classrooms and a community that loves reading

At the end of July 2025 Miss Mowbray had a brilliant idea: get the children running, raise some money, and do something wonderful with it. What followed grew beyond our expectations with the impact being felt in every classroom and beyond. This is the story of book week.

🏃  The Spark: A Sponsored Run

Miss Mowbray set the whole thing in motion. Children laced up their trainers, Miss Schmidt brought some banging tunes, Mrs Blomely ran dressed as a dinosaur, FOSS volunteers wore high vis as only they can, families got behind the kids — and the generosity was extraordinary.

💰 £5,445

total raised

🌍 £2,134

Malala Fund

A global ripple effect

Part of the money went to the Malala Fund, co-founded by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, which fights to get every girl in the world into 12 years of quality education. Over 122 million girls are currently out of school. Our children's laps helped change that.

New Books Bought and Classrooms transformed ✨

The rest of that money funded beautiful new books for every class. Then FOSS fundraised a little more, the marvellous Lou Mackie hit Facebook Marketplace to source nearly new and second-hand bookshelves and volunteers spent a day of half term redesigning every book corner — new shelves, soft lighting, cosy seating — all ready to wow everyone on the first day back at school.

📚  What Grew From It: Book Week

That first run sparked something bigger. Book Week brought the whole community together in a celebration of reading that gave us all the feels.

🎂 £700+

cake sale & fair

✍️ Author Visit

talk & signings

All about books! An author in our school, library visits and trips to Waterstones

One of our brilliant parents arranged for a published author to visit, Jim Smith spent time with KS2 talking about his work, taking questions and signing books. Teachers also scheduled school outings to libraries and book shops to spend their World Book Day tokens which the children thoroughly enjoyed.

A wet but wonderful book fair 🌧️

Rain didn't stop us! Parents donated books all week, even after we’d taken lots of those books to add to our school library, by Friday we had a sale to rival Waterstones! Combined with the Mandela class cake sale we raised over £700 for school funds.

Standing room only

Miss Mowbray's reading session packed the hall to the rafters and then parents were welcomed into classrooms to read with their children. The kids were proud to show off their spaces, parents were glad to see their classrooms and new book corners. It was one of those afternoons that makes you incredibly proud to be part of this community.

Passing books on 📦

All surplus books were donated to The Children's Book Project, a UK charity that has gifted over two million books to children and families who need them most.

None of this would have been possible without you. Every sponsored lap, every donated book, every cake bought or baked and every WhatsApp message endured (!) — it all added up to something truly wonderful. Thank you. 💛

Join FOSS!

We are a newly formed committee and would love to have more input from parents throughout all year groups, you don’t need to commit to huge chunks of time, we will happily work with you to find out what it possible, or if you have an event you’d like to bring to the calendar please get in touch and let us know.

What you can do to help

With a few people stepping back we are eager fill those positions to make sure we’re going to be able to continue supporting our school so please chat to us in the playground or contact us via your rep or email foss@ststephensTW1.onmicrosoft.com 

We are specifically looking for volunteers to help with: 

• The school uniform shop

• The children's Christmas cards

If you’d like to volunteer at events, join our FOSS events and volunteer whatsapp community, where you can join volunteer groups for any of the events you are interested in helping. 

Click this link to join https://chat.whatsapp.com/COFUzQn7mZcCauV0uCMzJX