12th March 2020

Colleagues from Coram Beanstalk’s charity partner, The Very Group, spent a very special day of storytelling and book-based activities with Liverpool primary school children.

The online retailer, which has committed to raise £600,000 for Coram Beanstalk over the next two years, kicked off the exciting two-year partnership by taking part in the charity’s ‘Story Readers’ activity.

The storytelling-based event involved colleagues being trained by Coram Beanstalk to deliver engaging reading sessions for children and then spending an afternoon putting into practice their learning, reading with local primary school children.

Taking part in the session were 17 colleagues from the group’s Liverpool-based head office who spent the morning being trained by Coram Beanstalk’s Head of Programmes Angela Fuggle. Angela showed them techniques of using books in a variety of ways, to make reading sessions as fun and engaging as possible for the children.

Following the morning’s training session, St Christopher’s Catholic Primary School brought 40 children from Year 2 to The Very Group’s offices where they had great fun reading stories and sharing books with small groups of the children.

Amy Lewis, Coram Beanstalk’s Head of Support Service, helped coordinate the event:

“It was just such a brilliant day celebrating stories and books! The grown-ups loved it and the kids loved it - it’s why we are so passionate about putting on these types of events with our charity partners. It’s such a great way to bring local businesses and schools together in a practical and impactful way, inspiring younger generations to develop a lifelong love of reading while also giving colleagues the opportunity to get involved in doing something really great for their community and hopefully encouraging them to do more of the same!”

We had two very bright and confident children in our group and one child who was more nervous and reticent about taking part. Both myself and Mark worked really hard to include him in everything and at the end he came up and gave us both a big smile and a high five. I'll be honest, I got quite emotional about that - Michael Wright, a colleague at The Very Group.

The school Tweeted afterwards to say that the children “loved listening to the stories".

The Very Group will raise £600,000 over the next two years through colleague activities and events, as well as providing industry-leading tech knowledge, to help Coram Beanstalk support 40,000 children with one-to-one reading support.

Find out more about The Very Group partnership.