Destination Devon

We are Target Who and this month has seen a scattering of schools across Devon pinned on our Target Who Project Map.  We have three very special people to thank for this progress.

The first person is the wonderful Jeni Jones, a Senior Manager at Hays. I first contacted her late last year while seeking help to reach schools in the South West of the UK.   She enthusiastically agreed to help our project and arranged help in six offices. The two southernmost, Exeter and Plymouth were both areas we had been unable to reach so far.  Getting books to them therefore became out first priority.. 

The second person to thank is the fabulous Tim Ledger.  Tim is Andrew’s Uncle and, hearing we needed help to reach Exeter, he quickly volunteered to help.  Andrew boxed up the books into small bundles and Tim transported them from Hampshire to the Exeter office.  The books for the Plymouth office were also left with Exeter staff and Plymouth staff will be collecting them soon.  Keep an eye out for pins appearing there and in Cornish schools in the near future.

Finally we need to thank the awesome Sarah Blazey of the Exeter office who has been contacting schools and taking the books to their final destinations.  We have been receiving a small flurry of thank you emails from school around Devon and it is lovely to hear how appreciated the books are.

We are Target Who.  We have now placed over 7,000 free books into school libraries and we haven’t finished yet!

Target Who would like to thank Jeni Jones, Tim Ledger and Sarah Blazey

Seeding the Garden of England

We are Target Who and let’s chart our progress in the North of Kent

Andy Armstrong is one of the original thirty members of Target Who that donated money to fund the purchase of the books. His contribution didn’t stop there though, as he took on the responsibility of delivering books to interested schools around his county. He’s met up with Andrew a couple of times to collect books, and couldn’t resist stopping on the way home for the below Doctor Who in-joke photograph!

 

Trying to fit deliveries around his work and family life has resulted in Andrew taking some extremely diverse routes home following his early shifts!   It has resulted in our books slowly spreading out across the county.  

We are Target Who and we haven’t finished with Kent yet.  Keep watching the map for more pins appearing soon,

A Capital Problem

We are Target Who and we always expected that there would be parts of the country where help would prove difficult to find.   we didn’t, however, expect that the most difficult place would be London.  We thought it would be easy to find help in our most densely populated city, but that was not the case.  

We had two false starts with people eager to help if they could, but it soon became apparent the impossibility of them fitting trips to schools around their busy working lives. Since moving away from London some years ago, I had forgotten how hectic and stressful the London Lifestyle is.  Long hours, long commutes and schools only open for such a short period.

Plan B would have seen me take a large suitcase full books down to central location in London to enable teachers to meet and collect their books.  Two detached retinas put paid to that plan!  We were beginning to wonder if we would ever reach London schools!

So when we started contacting Hays Manager, my most nervous telephone call was to their London office.  Would they agree to help, or would they be one of the few offices that turned us down?  I put off the phone call for several hours, fearing the worst…

Thankfully when I made the call, the wonderful Tim Field was full of enthusiasm for what we were trying to achieve.  He immediately pledged the full support of his office to help us reach the waiting London schools.  He also put us in touch with their second London Office, but more about them in another post.  

The next task was to get books to their office in Victoria and Andrew braved the London traffic and the congestion zone and delivered books for sixty-three schools.  Deliveries to schools have now started and Tim recently sent in an update to us.  Plotted below are the first of their 63 schools on the Target Who Pin Map.

We are Target Who and it’s fantastic to know our books are finally moving out across our Capital City.

Target Who would like to thank Tim Field and the staff of the Hays Victoria office for spreading our books across London.

Snail Mail

We are Target Who and we love to receive mail.  Our mail box mainly receives requests from schools to be included in our project or confirmation of deliveries.  Occasionally though something special surprises us, perhaps tales of children’s reactions, and school assemblies about Target Who or comments passed on from the children who have read the books (the best of all).  Most surprising of all was our first email from a non-human…

The sender was Stanley Hufflepuff, a Giant African Land Snail that resides in St. John the Baptist Catholic Primary School in Padiham.  Stanley has his own TARDIS, and when he isn’t residing in Mrs Carlile’s Year 2 Classroom, he’s off having adventures in Time and Space.  He also writes an online diary that’s avidly followed by the children in the school, and maybe a few people outside the school after this blog post!  You can read his dairy here: Stanley's Diary

Stanley’s school is up in Lancashire, a long way away from any of the Target Who team.  We managed to reach them with the help of the lovely Victoria Gartner of Hays in Liverpool, who passed books up to Bridget Hothersall in their Preston office, who delivered them to the school. Stanley wrote all about Bridget’s visit in his diary on 14^th January. (Stanley’s Diary - January 2014). He even got Mrs Carlile to contact the local papers to spread the word about Target Who.  What a Super-Star Snail!

But that wasn’t the end of our communication with Stanley.  Here in Gloucester the Dovey family have four pet Giant African Land Snails of our own.  I couldn’t resist sending Stanley and the class a few photographs of them.  I also realised that it will be a few years before Mrs Carlile’s class will be able to read those Doctor Who books that are now in their school library.  I therefore sorted out a few more books that are age appropriate for them as a special thank you.  I parcelled them all up and addressed them to Stanley Hufflepuff.  He was so excited to receive some mail he wrote all about it in his diary last week! (See end of 2nd May entry here).

Mrs Carlile, who is obviously a brilliant teacher, harnessed the children’s excitement in last week’s literacy and IT lessons.  To our absolute delight a small parcel of beautifully written thank you letters and a whole gallery of amazing snail pictures arrived in the post last Saturday. The letters contain a large number of questions all about Target Who, so I’ll be busy answering them via Stanley in the days ahead. See all their drawings here: Snail Gallery

We are Target Who and it’s an honour to be a small moment of inspiration in the education of these children.  

Target Who would like to thank Victoria Gartner, Bridget Hothersall, Mrs Carlile, Stanley the Snail and all the children of Year Two.