COVID-19 Face Shields for Frontline NHS Staff

**Moving forward, due to overwhelming generosity of our donors, donations received beyond Monday 20th April will be used to support charities and partner community organisations who are struggling to cope at this present time. These will range from local Pupil Referral Units who need resources for vulnerable children across to food banks in neighbourhoods in Reading. Rest assured that every penny given will go straight into projects that Leighton Park School has contact and connection with. Our aim, like yours, is to be working shoulder to shoulder with our community in the fight against COVID and we know together we can do it. ** As I'm sure you are aware, there is  a critical shortage of medical PPE at the moment. Local Primary Care services and hospitals have been requesting support over social media to help them overcome these shortages of protection for their frontline staff. I (along with many colleagues from my school) am helping to support our local healthcare services by producing faceshields that we are giving, free of charge, to any at risk workers in local hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes. We are in a fortunate position that we have access to a laser cutter that can be manned 24 hours a day should the demand require. We also have residential staff who are willing to support me and my Design & Technology Department with this venture and offer their time. I have already been overwhelmed with the response from local GPs who have heard about what we are doing here at Leighton Park and have rung me to request some face shields for their staff as they are woefully under-resourced when it comes to protective equipment. I had originally thought we would make 200 face shields, which we would have funded as a school, but there is quite clearly a much greater need, so I have set us the ambitious task of making 1,000 pieces. As you can imagine, this comes with a significant cost implication, despite the masks working out at about £1 each. I have had parents of our wonderful students contacting me and asking of they can contribute towards this project, so I felt it would be helpful to set up this GoFundMe page to help us achieve our mission. As I said earlier, we have the available equipment and skilled staff on site, the willing volunteers (who have already been amazing) and the contacts for additional materials, so our only limiting factor is the financing of the project. If you have the funds to help us realise our goal, your contributions would be enormously appreciated by us and the staff we are looking to help. Thank you!