A request was made to the CMPP by a local Junior school, The Hermitage, to help create a new “sensory room” as part of the Orchard Centre. This is a specialist provision within the school for up to 16 children with special educational needs or disabilities whose primary need is moderate learning difficulties. As a Governor at the school, I can see first hand how important the centre is, so I was delighted to be able to help as a steering group member through my employer TVision, but also as a Governor of the school.

CMPP Tvision team

Charlotte-Louise, Rachael and I turned up on Thursday afternoon armed with the knowledge that we would be preparing the room as the first of three sessions. We soon discovered we would actually be getting straight down to painting… or rather up as given the height of the room we needed a stepladder if we had any chance of reaching the area near the ceiling.

CMPP Give and Get day 2 - before

Even though we only had access to the room for three hours, the three of us quickly got to work and tried to ensure the surfaces were as clean as possible before we started painting over the tired looking yellow paint. One of my colleagues started taking about “cutting in” – but I just carried on with my paintbrush and presumed that what I was doing was okay.

On a few occasions we had some interested children looking in through the door to see what was going on – although they were only in the exterior main room for a short while accompanied by their teacher. They all seemed intrigued by the sight of us moving furniture around and climbing the stepladder.

CMPP Give and get day - Tvision logo

Elspeth from Woking Council (also on the steering group) arrived about half way through to see exactly what we were up to. I took advantage of the opportunity when she was discussing the CMPP to snap a quick photo as she explained to her colleagues who TVision are (our logo is one on the pull up banner we use at events).

At the end of our allocated time we were pleased to have painted three of the four walls, they seemed so clean and bright now they were white. The older yellow colour had been covered up. I just hope that in the daylight of this morning the job was as thorough as we believed it to be yesterday.

All in all, I think it was a great opportunity for two reasons. Firstly, we were able to do some charitable work in the community, so from a CSR point of view – that’s one of the main reason we joined the CMPP. And secondly, we were able to spend the afternoon as a team without the added pressure of work phone calls and other day-to-day work activities getting in the way. I would thoroughly recommend getting involve in one of the CMPP Give and Get days as part of a team networking day away from the office.

I’m really excited to see what the end result will look like. I’ll update this post with photos of the finished project. Watch this space.

 

 By Marketing Manager Danusia Jolliffe