Nursery staff at the Little Adventurers Nursery in Upminster adorned Christmas Jumpers on Friday 11th December in support of local Salvation Army projects.
The caring staff team decided to raise awareness and collect all sorts of necessities to donate to their local branch for families in need this Christmas.
Phil Goldsmith, local Territorial Envoy of the Harold Hill Salvation Army Church was delighted and said, “It’s lovely to have this partnership with Little Adventurers. We greatly appreciate them supporting us in this way both with essential items and the donation. This year we have been responding to the crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic, for example we run Food Share, giving out fresh food along with tinned goods. We check in on those living alone; provide Christmas parcels of toys and goodies for families, and we work with local schools and children’s centres.
Donations such as this will be used to support local people directly or indirectly impacted by the pandemic.”
Nursery Director, Lee Stimpson commented, “As a local business, we are very keen to support local charities and I am particularly proud of how our team continue to pull together and care for those in need despite the difficulties of this year. I similarly wanted to make a nursery donation alongside the collection of essential items for this much needed work.”
“This year has been a particularly difficult one for so many people – our parents and staff included. I am proud that we remained open for key worker families throughout lockdown and want to thank our families for their support of the nursery throughout this year. It is only through pulling together that we have got through. It has been wonderful to see the children all back to nursery and thriving again despite the many challenges that Covid-19 has placed on us all. Our staff team, led by our exceptional Manager, have been equally amazing throughout the year.”
Phil Goldsmith was also delighted to present staff practitioner Linda with her retirement bouquet and gift whilst visiting.
Business Development Manager, Chris Ford explained, “Linda has led our liaison with the local Salvation Army branch for the past two years and it seemed very fitting for Phil to present our gifts to Linda in celebration of her retirement.” Staff are keen for the partnership to continue and therefore Sarah will be taking over the charity baton from Linda in the New Year.
Chris went on to say, “Linda is a warm, caring, very willing and professional nursery practitioner who is equally as popular with children and staff at our nursery where she has worked for the past 4 years. Linda has been particularly instrumental in supporting the work of our Healthy Early Years London Silver Award as our oral hygiene champion. We will be really sad to see Linda leave our fulltime team; we know she has made lots of friends here and we will continue to keep in touch. Linda is our first member of staff to retire and we wish her many years of happy retirement life.”
Little Adventurers are immensely proud of their long-standing staff team, “A great majority of the team have been with us for 3 years or more and we really try to show staff, in a variety of ways, just how much we value them. For example, we have recently treated staff to a takeaway and zoom party as we were unable to hold our usual Christmas social evening, which was really appreciated. It is testament to the very strong team we have here that we receive such fantastic parent reviews.”
Manager of the setting, Ginny Andreas won UK Nursery Manager of the Year Award alongside the nursery winning a top 6 UK Health and Wellbeing Award last year with Nursery World. They have also achieved a Bronze, Silver and Gold Health Early Years London Award and adopt a healthy lifestyles approach for all the children and families at the setting. This includes working with a nutritionist to devise their optimum nutritional menu.
