Month: March 2023

New Trustees Join RCCT

We are all excited to announce three new Trustees have joined the Trust.
Regular volunteers Lisa Smith and Tanja Salter have helped us for many years and Teresa Burns joined us as our new treasurer.
We are delighted to welcome our new trustees new faces, new voices, and new ideas. We are all looking forward to carrying on working hard to raise funds, help local people and continue making a real difference in our community.
If you can find ways to give people hope then there’s an opportunity for something good to happen. Good people don’t set out to be a leader, they set out to make a difference because it’s never about the role, always about the goal.

Character & Citizenship Award at MBK

We were delighted to be involved with the Character & Citizenship Award at MBK.
The first Character and Citizenship Award Ceremony took place at Millbrook last week, with children being the first pupils within the Vale Academy Trust to gain this prestigious accolade!
The Vale Academy Trust launched its Character and Citizenship Award scheme across its six primary schools last summer, with the support of community partners: the Ray Collins Charitable Trust, the Community of St Mary the Virgin, Thames Valley Police, Wantage Town Council and Williams Racing. The Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Mrs Marjorie Glasgow, B.E.M. is the scheme’s Patron.
To mark this special occasion, we invited Ray Collins from the Ray Collins Charitable Trust into the school to present the 15 pupils with their silver awards. Ray, a former King Alfred’s pupil, explained: “When our Trust was asked to be one of the partners of the Vale Academy Trust’s Citizen Awards, we were immensely proud to be involved.”
“Seeing first-hand the joy and pride on the pupils’ faces when receiving their awards was just wonderful and then hearing about what they had achieved in order to attain their awards was very uplifting. In line with what lies behind the award’s ethos, it was lovely to see that kindness, caring, helping, and encouraging others were at the heart of this.”
“I also heard about children being courageous and being encouraged to step out of their comfort zones by giving talks to classmates, fundraising, and joining clubs both in and outside of school. The self-confidence gained from these experiences will stay with them and benefit them throughout their lives. I look forward to presenting many more of these awards in the future!”
Our children were so excited to receive their awards and were delighted that Ray could be there to present them. Ray thoroughly endorsed the message that being kind and caring for your community is something that we value highly and is achievable by all. Our pupils were utterly inspired by his life story and came away ‘buzzing’ with enthusiasm!!!
Ray also stayed on to meet with some children who shared their citizenship award booklets with him & discussed how they found the scheme! Our children told Ray that they have loved working towards their character and citizenship targets, with Luke commenting, “it’s really great to see everything that we get the chance to do, and ticking off my targets makes me feel really proud.” And Lucas added, “I like it because it helps you remember all that you actually do at school!”
Ray then showed the children his charity’s “Queens Award for Voluntary Service” certificate from Queen Elizabeth II, presented to him in 2021 by the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire. The award was presented for all their hard work and good deeds in the community and it’s signed by the Queen – it certainly inspired our pupils!

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