Sigma Capital donates £50,000 to local schools and charities

In early 2018, Sigma Capital Group plc, investment adviser to The PRS REIT plc, announced it would be donating £50,000 to charitable organisations and schools in the areas in which it is developing its schemes in 2018. The company, which is bringing forward large-scale housing schemes across the UK for the private rented sector, has now revealed the recipients of its CSR donations and details of some of the projects it is working on.

Sigma has donated £8,000 to five schools in the UK, each school identified a project that they wanted to implement, and all are now underway or complete.

The schools selected and confirmed by Sigma are Monksdown Primary School in Norris Green, Liverpool; Mills Hill Primary School in Chadderton, Greater Manchester and Riverview Primary School in Salford. Over in Sheffield, St Theresa’s Catholic School will receive the £8,000 funding, along with Galton Valley Primary School in Smethwick in the West Midlands.

Each school has different requirements, so the donations will cover a range of improvements, including better playgrounds, reading areas and libraries, as well as sensory play areas and gifts for the children, such as books on their birthdays and theatre trips.

Mills Hill Primary School completed work on its playground earlier this month. Previously, older children had access to a ‘scrap yard play’ shed which proved to be very popular, encouraging ‘imaginative play’ amongst the children. As the school has grown, the playground has had to be split into different age groups, so Head Teacher Ian Mason wanted to use the money to create a new ‘scrap yard play shed’ for the younger children, as well as making further additions to the playground like bringing in new benches. The older children are also now benefitting from a new, durable metal container shed and a host of additional play and sports equipment to enhance break times and lessons.

Ian Mason, Head Teacher at Mills Hill Primary School comments, “One of our priorities here at Mills Hill is to enhance the quality of our lunchtime experiences for children. We encourage our children to be both active physically and to be creative with their environment. The much-needed money from Sigma Capital has increased our equipment for children and will result in more active and creative lunchtimes.”

Vicky Hurcomb, Marketing Manager from Sigma, said: “We are working hard to develop and improve communities in each of the areas where our chosen schools are situated by building much-needed new homes, so it makes sense for us to support the schools, pupils and teachers in these areas if we can. We earmarked £50,000 for this activity at the beginning of the year and the projects that we are working on are really starting to take shape now, which is fantastic to see.

“We take our CSR commitments very seriously at Sigma and we are currently looking at ways in which we can formalise this going forward, so that we can continue to provide help and support for amazing communities like these in the future.”

As well as working with the schools, Sigma has also pledged its support to a number of charities in the North West, where it has been focussing a lot of its work over the last 10 years.

Sigma’s support for the Sale Colts (under 18s) Rugby Club is continuing in 2018, covering the cost of the sports kit and providing rugby lessons for children in a number of schools across the region, with a particular focus on making the sport more accessible for girls.

Park Palace Ponies, a riding school in Merseyside, which offers riding lessons to children in the outer-suburbs of Liverpool, is also one of Sigma’s charities. The funding provided by Sigma will go towards sponsoring a horse for the duration of 2018, as well as offering riding lessons to some of the children at Monksdown Primary School.

Homeless charity, Salford Loaves and Fishes is also a charity close to Sigma’s heart. Sigma supported the charity with a £5,000 donation in 2017 and it has matched this again in 2018. The amount of homeless people visiting the drop-in centre has grown significantly in the last 12 months, so the £5,000 donation has gone towards creating an exterior paving area for summer BBQ events, as well as a large gas barbecue. Sigma has also provided the drop-in centre with arts, crafts and reading group materials.

A spokesperson from the charity, said: “The monies received from Sigma have enabled Salford Loaves and Fishes to reintroduce activities which had been greatly missed by our service users since our move to Paddington Close, in particular the art class, which proves very popular with both young and old visitors to the centre.

“We have also been able to establish a group of service users who are committed to developing their IT skills on an ongoing basis. The monies provided by Sigma not only allowed us to purchase equipment to initiate these groups but will fund the continuation of these activities for some time yet. The aim of the activity programme is to engage, inspire and educate our service users.”

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