Two former students were among a team of volunteers from energy network SGN who spent a day rejuvenating Crofton Infant School’s overgrown outdoor learning environment.
The primary school had two forest school areas providing multi-sensory spaces to enhance learning about nature and encourage students to engage with the great outdoors. However, they had not been maintained and the school wanted to condense them into a single forest school to enable an extension of the children’s play area.
To support the school, five colleagues from SGN’s Construction team carried out a range of tasks on the site to help restore the forest school to its former glory, including two of our people who used to attend the school.
The volunteering effort was part of SGN’s Community Action Programme, a scheme which gives its 4,000 people a day of company time each year to help an organisation or charity of their choice.
While their day jobs involve ensuring the gas network is operating safely and reliably across London and the south-east, the volunteers threw themselves into the project by stripping the existing overgrown area down to the ground so pupils could safely use the space once more. The team then removed the forest school’s existing perimeter fence, cleared excess logs, leaves and debris and prepared for the area to be mowed.
Our Construction Project Manager David Westlake, who attended Crofton Infant School in the 1990s and whose two daughters now attend it, said: “The team and I were delighted to help restore a vital, engaging outdoor space for the schoolchildren. Condensing the forest school into one area will hopefully help it be more manageable to upkeep going forward and ensure the pupils can benefit from outdoor learning when spring and summer roll around. The project has also enabled greater room for the children to play under natural shade from the trees thanks to the play area being extended.”
We were so happy when Dave approached us offering volunteers to renew a disused section of forest school land. The volunteer team were so efficient and made light of a big job: clearing the overgrown area and removing the old fencing to ensure the space can be used once more. The end result is fantastic and we can’t thank SGN enough.
