About Friends of Ark Atwood (FofAA)

If your child is at Ark Atwood, then you are part of Friends of Ark Atwood – which was set up to achieve the following aims:

  1. To promote a cohesive school community and to ensure that all children and their families can play a part in the wider school community.
  2. To fundraise for the school to help it achieve its aims for each child.

With these two aims in mind, FofAA organises social events as well as fundraising events.

The committee

The FofAA Committee is elected at the end of every school year. It maps out the regular events in the Atwood calendar, and finds volunteers to plan, organise and help run them. Sometimes the Committee members are in charge of individual events, but it is by no means a requirement. The following roles make up the committee:

  • Chair: Responsibility of heading the Friends of Ark Atwood Committee. Leads and manages meetings. Liaises with other committee members, event volunteers and the school as and when the need arises. Ensures events are happening.
  • Co-Chair: optional. Supports the Chair whenever possible
  • Secretary: Writes minutes and actions for each meeting, disseminates information (incl. on social media) and decisions to both the school and parents, organises venues for meetings if needed.
  • Treasurer:  Manages the finances and reports against expenses and income, provides an update on spend and current balance at each meeting.

Friends of Atwood Committee:

·         Chair: Ishraf Ashbab

·         Finance: Jonny Finch

·         Admin Support: tbc

·         Communications: tbc

To support the committee in their work, class reps ensure good communication with the parents and teachers of their class.

Every class should have a class rep, whose key responsibilities include:

  • organising collections for teachers’ presents (Christmas and End-of-Year)
  • liaising between their class and FofAA
  • setting up social events for their class (optional).

Upcoming meetings

Meetings are generally held on weekday mornings after drop-off, but if there is enough demand, they can be held in the evenings as well. We understand that it is difficult for some people to get to meetings, but please don’t feel that you are excluded from joining in with FofAA activities or simply from making suggestions. We are always delighted to see you or hear from you, and we welcome your ideas. 

Social events

Many of our events are purely social – simply there so Atwood families can come and have fun.

Fundraising activities

There is plenty of opportunity to get involved in the variety of fundraising activities scheduled during the year.

How we're doing

We are delighted that we have raised over £30,000 and have contributed towards buying musical instruments, a traversing wall for the playground, salsa costumes, play equipment, a school library from which children are happily borrowing books and helping towards the School Hardship Fund.

The various supporting roles are:

  • FofAA Publicists – help with publicity, events, flyers, posters, photographers, film-makers and social media experts
  • FofAA Chefs and Bakers: particularly for Christmas and Summer Fairs, but also for Cake Sales (1 Cake Sale per Year Group per school year), School Disco, etc.
  • FofAA Fair helpers: School Fairs – if you can help run a stall, or have great fresh ideas for new or previous stalls you have run, setting up and cleaning up (so welcome!), cook our barbecue, help serve drinks, food
  • FofAA Socialisers: helping welcome new parents, be present at coffee mornings
  • FofAA Hoarders: if you can help run the Jumble  and  Vintage Sales, source prizes for tombolas and raffles

How to stay in touch