Foxwood Special School celebrate with O2

O2 staff at Preston Brook threw a party for disabled children at Foxwood Special School in Birchwood to celebrate the end of a year of fundraising as part of the company’s It’s your Community Programme.

Over 1700 people at the customer service centre raised £26,562 to build a multi-sensory garden with wheelchair friendly concrete walkways and specially raised flowerbeds for the 72 students at the school.

On Wednesday the students visited O2’s centre in Preston Brook to celebrate the completion of the project with cakes and fairground games.

They played a life-sized game of Jenga, Connect Four and took part in a Nintendo Wii competition alongside O2 staff. The students also had cakes with their own photographs printed on them. O2 people and students had the chance to win an i-Pod touch mobile phone, shopping vouchers and leisure vouchers in the raffle.

Hayley Adamson, who is Head of Retention and Upgrades at O2 and chair of the Community Crew who carried out the work at the school, said the project had been a rewarding experience for O2 people.

“It has been wonderful to support Fox Wood Special School over the past year,” she said. “Our people have been behind the project 100 per cent, trying to raise as much money as possible. And it’s also been great to roll our sleeves up and get directly involved with the building work too.

“To have the students visit us today to celebrate a year of success is the cherry on the cake,” she said.

The project has transformed the previously derelict and waterlogged land.

The decision to support a local project marked a step change in the way O2 raises funds for charity. For the past three years the company have worked with a single UK charity partner but in 2008 decided to give staff at its five main sites across the country the opportunity to raise cash for a charity of their choice, in their local area.

O2’s support of Foxwood Special School is part of the O2 It’s Your Community programme, which allows groups, organisations and charities to apply for awards ranging from £100 to £1000 to make a difference within communities. To date over £1 million has been donated to over 1,500 projects across the UK. To find out more and apply visit www.itsyourcommunity.co.uk