John Lewis supports The Mount School in raising funds for Good Neighbour Scheme

PRESS RELEASE 1st Feb 2013

Community collaboration reaches out to support local elderly and disabled residents.

No matter how big or small, we can all play our part.  That is the key message behind the Mount School's local initiative to use its multi-cultural and inclusive ethos to support the charity "The Good Neighbour Scheme for Mill Hill and Burnt Oak", a scheme in Mill Hill and Burnt Oak which provides volunteers for transport, shopping trips and lunch clubs for elderly and disabled residents.

The Mount School produced last year an anthology of the girls' work, entitled

A Celebration of Food from the Four Seasons of the World.

The Mount School are keen to support local as well as national charities, and in producing the anthology, the girls felt that "The Good Neighbour Scheme" was a worthy recipient of the proceeds, not least as the topic is about food and sharing with our neighbours, our recipes from cultures, faiths and countries around the world."

The girls from all years have contributed to this work which was edited by the year 9, current year 10 girls, who are now involved in promoting it to raise funds.

The collection of recipes, poems, stories and artwork is a collaboration between the teachers and the pupils, covering a multi-disciplinary approach to put a more personal and interesting cultural spin on the traditional recipe book. The end result, edited by the girls over a number of months as an extra-curricular activity was compiled and professionally published free of charge by mardibooks,(whose co-founder is Head of English at The Mount) initially as an ebook, available on Amazon. For Christmas, due to popular demand, it was brought out as a print copy for sale via the web, via the school and via the publisher's website, www.mardibooks.com<http://www.mardibooks.com/> 

The Mount School is pleased to be able to give a box of 40 of the books to The Good Neighbour Scheme to sell directly to their volunteers, clients and supporters as well as selling the books in school and donating the additional sales proceeds to the charity during the course of the year.

"What has made this so exciting has been the industry and charity involved from various sources.  The publishers contributed editing time and the actual costs of ebook publication as well as the typesetting and layout costs of the origination for hard copy printing, whilst the school has covered the actual printing costs.  The net proceeds will all go to the Good Neighbour Scheme to support its members," the Headteacher explained.

Supporting the local school's charity project, John Lewis Brent Cross is to sell The Mount School's book in the shop's kitchenware department on Sunday 17th March 2013.  All profits from sales of the book will be donated to the Good Neighbour Scheme.

Richard Dearden, managing director at John Lewis Brent Cross said: "We are delighted to support this entrepreneurial activity; it is inspiring to see young people working so hard to make a success of this fantastic charitable initiative".

"We wanted a really local charity to be helped by our anthology, so that we could work with everyone involved from its inception to its fulfilment as a project," said Catherine Cozens, Headteacher at The Mount. "There has been such a tremendous and positive feedback from the anthology that we are continuing the project this year and the whole school are involved in producing another compilation, this time on the topic of 'Gothic'."


Amber Codron and Sophie Shaban, two year 10 girls are the team leaders for the project. "We have a great team of girls and staff, making it all come together."

The Mount pride themselves on equipping girls with the abilities to lead, project manage and communicate. Great life skills that enable Mount Girls to become successful in life.

Belinda Hunt, Head of English has been working behind the scenes helping the girls bring the project to fruition.  "We would like to thank all involved in facilitating this exciting co-curricular project and for enabling it to be successful in raising funds for a good cause on our doorstep."