Caritas

Meet our Caritas Ambassadors! Caritas is all about showing love. We can show love in many ways. Through the words we use, through the expressions on our face, through a caring hug or, importantly, through our actions.

This is our Caritas Ambassadors’ job – to show love through their actions. In fact, their job is more than this. It is their job to lead the whole of our school in showing love through our actions, particularly for the people within our local community.

To learn more about their roles, the Ambassadors attended training at the Cathedral Centre and were commissioned in a beautiful service in the cathedral itself. It was on this day that they wrote an action plan. This is a list of some of the things they want to achieve over the next year as Caritas Ambassadors. They have already got the ball rolling on some of their actions so watch this space for updates on their progress!

After impressing the organisers of the commissioning day, our team of Caritas Ambassadors were specially selected to return to the cathedral to take part in a ‘befriending’ afternoon. Elderly service users from one of the charities supported by the cathedral’s Caritas team were visiting and the children were asked along to keep them company! They shared lunch with the lovely ladies and gentlemen, listened to their stories about their lives and completed a craft project together.

The Ambassadors delivered a presentation about what Caritas is all about and their action plan for the next year. It was such a privilege to spend the afternoon with these interesting people and they were clearly very grateful for the time the children spent with them. We all left feeling inspired to do more for the elderly in our local community!

Kathryn Ansley, a trainer from the Catholic Social Teaching team at Salford Cathedral said the following about our children:

“They treated our guests from St Joseph’s Welfare befriending scheme with such dignity, care and respect and are a huge credit to themselves and the school. Today was all about giving a platform for those without a voice to inspire young people and vice versa and I think we achieved that. Our guests really enjoyed spending time with the children and have asked when we will be doing it again!”

Craft Club

Our Caritas team have set up a craft group and reading group, both of which run in our parish hall on a weekly basis. Our elderly VIPs from the Reddish community come to school for a cuppa and a biscuit then spend an hour reading or crafting with our children. The benefits for both the children and the visitors are endless and we can't wait to see what fantastic things are created by the group as the year goes on!

Early Essentials

After learning about the arrival of baby Jesus at Christmas, our Year 1 children wanted to help new Mums and babies.  They wrote a letter asking for donations of baby clothes, blankets, toys and nappies.  Thanks to the generosity of our children and parents we had over 40 bags to give the Early Essentials charity which is based in Manchester.  Here are some of the Year 1 children with the Caritas ambassadors. Well done to everyone!