Social Responsibility

We believe that as a childcare provider it is our duty to teach our children about their community, their responsibility to the environment and the people in it. At Woodlands we believe that helping children to understand the world around them and their place in it, inspires our young people to respect others and educates them to value diversity. Children can better understand their culture and identity by learning about those around them. We hope that by cultivating these positive attitudes in childhood they are likely to continue as our children grow into adulthood.

At Woodlands we do this by running events that link our children to their community. Our events aim to teach our children about those around them, help fundraise for people in need, spread our eco mesage and support our enironment. We often invite local services and people in our community in to come in and talk to our children about what they do. This helps our children connect with others and learn about our diverse community.  We have previously collected Easter eggs for our local children’s cancer ward at Southampton General, sent care packages to our serving military in Afghanistan to teach our children about the Armed Forces and donated toys to chuldren in need.

From January 2019 we decided our Social Responsibility needed to extend to teaching our children about how to better protect our world. We are using our platform in our community to encourage others to do the same. We have already made so many changes to not just our nursery but also our business, along with carefully choosing suppliers that share our vision.

As part of our eco journey we are emphasising to the children the importance of protecting our environment, this is reflected through changes we are making at our settings such as reducing our waste, phasing out plastic toys, trying to eliminate single use plastics from out settings but we are also working harder to be active in our community to help others make changes and educate other businesses, schools and indivduals what they can do to make a difference. Our children have become positive role models for others, our Woodlands Warriors are so passionate about cleaning our local areas, recycling, reusing and have been an inspiration to us.

Recently we arranged a Litter Pick of our local park, field and Holly Hill Woods, as part of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign. We were inundated with volunteers, our families, children and friends gave up their time on the weekend to collect rubbish and make our local spaces more enjoyable for all. We collected a huge amount of rubbish that Fareham Borough Council kindly disposed of for us.

Our Pre-School children visited Locks Heath Shopping Village to talk to customers about what we do and how they can be involved. They gave out canvas tote bags, bamboo toothbrushes, recycled old clothes, collected rubbish and encouraged shoppers to do the same. They spoke to other children about Woodlands and took examples of their toys and eco friendly resources.

We visited Always Plastic Free in Warsash, which only stocks eco friendly products. The children went down to learn all about the alternative products they could use instead. They also took down some rubbish that cannot be recycled in household waste and only at specialist centres, to stop them from going to landfill. They made eco bricks to donate to the shop, from plastics that could not be recycled that will be distrubuted to construct structures.

Our children have also visited other schools to talk to them about the changes we’ve made both at home and at nursery. When we visited Peel Common the children took notes from our presentation to brainstorm together as a class what might work for them, before taking it to their head teacher.

We are continuing to make changes in our setting and encourage event and activites that promote protecting our local area and inspire others to join us. You can see more about our journey on our instagram page @woodlandsecoproject or over on our eco page