“We’ve been blown away” – #TeamHart

Rugeley school smashes through fundraising target 

The Hart School in Staffordshire has been “blown away” by everyone’s generosity after it hit its fundraising target of £1k in just 24 hours.

The revelation came as it announced new plans to make 10,000 #PPE visors for our frontline #NHS workers after being “inundated” with requests for the protective face shields.

The Rugeley school’s original £1k GoFundMe appeal had smashed through the £3.5k mark – thanks to 141 donors – as of Good Friday afternoon, it showed no sign of slowing up, and after the Easter weekend the GoFundMe tally is now at £4,750k coupled with £1k from Amazon, £1,500 from business donations and a “generous” Rotary Club donation, making a current total of over £6.5k in a week.

Revised plan to manufacture 10,000 #faceshields

“Amazing” donations have also been flooding in from companies across South Staffordshire and the West Midlands – including Rugeley Self Storage, Halesowen’s MPH Precision and Pal Adhesive Products in Wednesbury

The “overwhelming” kindness of firms and families has led to the school to reveal plans to extend its campaign to make a staggering 10,000 face shields, which are being given out to GPs, care homes, community health workers, hospitals and other emergency services, such as Staffordshire Police officers.

Inundated with requests for #NHS #PPE face shields

Vice Principal Rachael Sandham said: “We really have been blown away by the generosity of everybody – which saw us hit our GoFundMe target in less than 24 hours.

“We have been inundated with requests for the face shields and we will be working our way through them daily.

“As a result of so much community generosity we’ve decided to extend the campaign and increase the amount and we hope that we can manufacture a total of 10,000 face shields to support our heroic workers.

“Please keep sharing our GoFundMe page – so far we’ve had 1.1k shares. It’s really amazing to see what we can achieve when we all pull together. Please continue to support us with this initiative #teamhart. Whatever it takes! Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives.”

“Amazing” donations from West Midland businesses

The Penkridge Bank Road school would also like to give their “huge thanks” to the following companies for their kind donations:

• Rugeley Self Storage – for supplying boxes to make the distribution easier;
• Paul Rodgers at MPH Precision in Halesowen and his contact Sue Smilalowski for the kind donation of materials allowing the production of an additional 500 face shields;
• Matt Willetts at Pal Adhesive Products in Wednesbury who kindly donated two full boxes of draft excluder;
• Ross Arts and Crafts and Fairway Curtains in Rugeley, who supplied elastics for the visors.
• It would like to acknowledge staff members Mr Rushton, Mrs Lewis, Miss Dosanjh, Mr Butterworth and Miss Sandham, for their ongoing dedication to manufacturing the protective visors.

Donations are also still being sought for the following materials: Headbands – Polypropylene sheet 0.8mm – any size or colour, Visor – Clear acetate, PVC, HIPS, Polypropylene Sticky back door/window draft excluder, Pop rivets 4mm/6mm, foam/exclude tape.

Anyone who would like to help the school to continue to help the NHS can donate to their GoFundMe appeal here.

And, if you can help the Hart School in Penkridge Bank Road, Rugeley, with donations of materials please call 01889 802440 or email [email protected]