On 22nd and 23rd March, we celebrated our first ever Giving Day.

Students, staff, parents, alumnae and the wider Withington community came together in various challenges raising over £70,000 for our Bursary Fund.

Our students unlocked £4,343 by running 4,343 laps of the all-weather pitch as part of a House Challenge. It was a very close-run thing, but Lejeune managed the most laps with 1,142. A big thank you to the PE Department for their support.

No doubt spurred on by this achievement, alumnae unlocked an additional £12,000 by ensuring that there were over 25 donations in the name of each Senior School House. Congratulations to Scott who, at the end of Giving Day, topped the House leaderboard with 37 individual donations.

Within school our House Bumper Bucket Challenge, invited students to donate £1 to support our Giving Day. A generous donor promised to match each £1 donated which meant £834 was raised. Congratulations to Simon who just pipped the other houses with £2 more in their bucket!

Our Ad Lucem Lantern Challenge inspired some amazing entries. Students were asked to create lanterns on the theme of what made Withington interesting, fun or special to them. Each lantern looked amazing but, when all the lanterns were displayed together in the Arts Centre, the effect was stunning. This included 17 lanterns that were specially created by Third Form Arts Award students. Thank you to the Art Department and the Junior School staff for making this challenge possible.

After much deliberation, the Heads of Houses selected the following winners:

Herford

Lejeune

Scott

Simon

Thank you to our Head Girl, Mayo Adetujoye who had the difficult task choosing the Junior winners.

As we exceeded our goal of 100 Giving Day donors, Miss Bruce, Madame Menzies and Mrs Roberts, members of staff who are also Withington alumnae, as promised, spent the following Monday teaching in their old school uniforms!

It was great to see so many people get involved to celebrate our first ever #WGSGivingDay, demonstrating once again how the Withington community achieves great things when we come together.

Thank you to everyone, including the Art and PE Departments for supporting the student challenges and to the 156 individuals who donated on the day. We’d also like to thank all of those who generously provided match-funding and those who signed up to be Giving Day Ambassadors, making the day a success.

Your efforts mean that we edge closer to our goal of providing the opportunity of a Withington education to 1 in 5 girls in the Senior School: girls who would otherwise be unable to take up their place here.

Thank you!