Your Housing Group staff clear woodland for Kirkby primary school

Forty-three volunteers from Warrington-based housing association, Your Housing Group, picked up paint brushes and gardening tools to give the woodland area at Kirkby Church of England Primary School near Liverpool a make-over.

The volunteers, all members of staff from Your Housing Group’s People and Communications team, spent a total of 169 hours painting, digging and clearing the woodland in the grounds of the school on Kirkby Hall Lane.

The team cleared the woodland pathways to make them child-friendly, removed a partially toppled tree to make the area safe and cleaned the weeds out of the pond to improve the habitat for the wildlife including the frog population. Other staff whitewashed the car park wall and painted the wooden picnic tables and bridge over the pond.  The volunteers also dug a vegetable patch and made it ready to plant vegetables and sow seeds.

The school is already using the spruced up space, with Year 6 finding it a perfect place to enjoy some downtime while doing their SATs, and the nursery class is planning a teddy bears picnic next week.  The school is also organising an Easter egg hunt in the woods next month.

 

Wendy Doherty, Group Director for People and Communications at Your Housing Group said: “At Your Housing Group our core values are based on pride, passion and creativity which this activity encapsulates completely. I’m so proud of the team.  Everyone worked so hard and the transformation of the woodland area was incredible. This initiative is part of Your Housing Group’s Volunteer Strategy.  We have committed to giving each member of staff  seven hours paid time to volunteer with a goal of donating a total of 602 volunteering hours in the first year of being in our new headquarters in Birchwood, which is called 602.”

Elaine Parr, Extended Services Co-ordinator at Kirkby Church of England Primary School: “All our staff and students are amazed by what’s been achieved.  It was a mammoth task and would have taken us months without Your Housing Group’s help.  It’s now safe, secure and accessible for the children to enjoy.  This transformation has really changed the lives of every child in the school and Your Housing Group has given us back our woodland, and we can’t thank them enough.”

The woodland clean-up was also made possible with the generous support of Johnsons Paints, Draper Tools, Linacre Pant Hire and contractors DLP.