Our school has the most wonderful approach to learning and child development. Our children get to experience virtual reality experiences, see chicks being hatched, have the latest in phonics books and software, laugh at pantomimes in school and much much more.

But the school funding gap means that it can’t pay for all of those wonderful, enhanced experiences. That’s where Friends of Swing Gate comes in.

We work with the teachers to understand what is needed but can’t necessarily be afforded, then we raise funds to meet that gap. In the process of doing so, we build a fantastic community of families and have a lot of fun.

Our focus

The charity constitution outlines our core areas of support:

• Health and wellbeing
• Technology and tools for all
• The physical environment

This year, FoSG is focusing on mental well-being. This is a huge issue for our age group of children and we want to support the school in providing and equipping mental health provision.

We’ve also agreed to help with the shortfall of funds needed to pay for new playground equipment. Providing funds to help replace the old adventure trail in the playground. 

Who we are 

Friends of Swing Gate School (known as FoSG) is a registered charity (number 1039636) run by volunteer parents of Swing Gate School to raise money for  enrichment resources and activities for the children. 

The Committee roles are elected each year at the AGM held in October.  Our current committee is: 

• Sara Marshall Chair  
• Caroline Scott Vice Chair
• Andy Clark Treasurer
• Sarah Jones Secretary
• Amy Tze-Ying Lam Trustee
• Nikki Luckhurst Trustee
• Alli Bostedt Trustee. 

As well as the named committee, there’s a wider team that help organise and run events during the year. You can view our upcoming events on our web page fosg.org and the school calendar. We use TicketTailor to sell our event tickets, click here to visit our page.         

We need your help

We need as many volunteers as we can get to help us with our work. If you can give one hour we’ll take it, if you can give one day, we’ll take it. If you have skills, expertise or stuff to give, we’ll take it.

What can you do to help?

The easiest way to help is to sign up to easyfundraising.org.uk. This is a cashback scheme that allows the charity to raise funds through the things you buy everyday. If you enable the widget on your phone/laptop, it will automatically pop up when you shop with certain brands. Most supermarkets, holiday companies and retailers are signed up so this is a really simple way to help.

Do you work for a company that does fund matching? Many businesses will now match charity fundraising. Likewise, if you work for a business that has charity giving or charity days, we’d love to hear from you.

Do you have time to help plan and deliver events and activities? If you have an hour to give, a day to give or you can get involved on a more regular basis, we’d love to have you involved.

Some of our parents like to make a regular donation. Whether that’s through salary sacrifice or directly to us, we’d be enormously grateful.

Can you help with the running of the charity? We need people to help with comms, admin, sponsorship and grant applications and a whole range of other organisational jobs. We have 7 fabulous Trustees, but we all work so need all the help we can get.

If you have ideas of how we can do more, better or easier, we’d love your input.

We want our children to have the best learning experience they can while they’re at Swing Gate and we’re ambitious in our plans. But when it comes down to it, we’re a group of people having fun doing fun stuff. We’d love to have you come and join us.

Friends of Swing Gate School is on Facebook where event reminders, information on how you can get involved, and all the latest news will be posted. You can find them here. You can also find this page by typing '@FOSGBerkhamsted' within the Facebook search bar.

All you need to do is 'like' this page. You will then receive updates from FOSG in your Facebook feed whenever a new post is added. 

We really appreciate all your support.