Thirty-five older residents from across the local community in Haringey recently visited Our Lady’ Convent High School, Hackney to enjoy the school’s annual Spring Community Lunch, kindly put on by the school’s catering staff and RE team and hosted by the entire Year 12 Sixth Form class. Visitors included residents from a local Haringey care home, Peregrine House, and Friends of Woodberry Downs, which is a popular social group for the over 50’s in North Hackney.
Ties between the school and these organisations were made through Our Lady’s Community Service programme, which assigns all Sixth Form students to community engagement placements across a variety of local groups and causes. The students make a two-hour visit to each project once a week over 14 academic weeks. The engagement work with older people has been particularly successful and so the Spring Lunch is a way to celebrate the shared joy and stories that have emerged out of this intergenerational project.
Tracey Boothe, the co-chair of Friends of Woodberry Downs said, ‘This occasion means so much to our members. The simple act of sitting down to eat with young people of this age is so important and is unfortunately something we see very little of today. Our Lady’s is a very hospitable school that takes its mission very seriously indeed.’
