Emma’s Story

Over the past two years, each week I’ve volunteered with Time to Read – sitting with a year 5 boy at his school to improve his reading. He never wore school uniform and the clothes he did wear often had holes in them. The effect of seeing how this boy had to participate in school, and the impact it had on him, saddened and upset me – but drove me to do something to help.

This is where Uniting Uniforms was born.

My vision was simple – to provide uniforms to all children that need one, up and down the country, to give them the sense of belonging all children should have. I envisioned this as scaling to become a circular, community initiative that mixed new and pre-loved uniforms and brought local communities together.

After spending a few months speaking to people in communities, charities and the Social Business Trust, I kicked off a project at my employer Bain & Company – bringing together colleagues from business strategy, innovation and design, we successfully secured funding through Bain’s Social Impact Fund for our first initiative.

This September, all children starting Reception at Oasis Johanna school in Waterloo will receive a full set of school uniform, as part of our pilot initiative. We had already been working together as part of the Time to Read programme, and we were both delighted to come together to test out our first initiative. The school have been at the heart of the charity from its creation – the year 6 pupils chose the name Uniting Uniforms, and joined a logo design session at Bain’s offices, with the whole school voting to choose their favourite logo!

Over the next year, we want to scale up across other Oasis schools (through a round of fundraising activity). We also want to work with community organisations, retailers, businesses and other charities to help setup community hubs to manage local collection points and circulation of uniforms to local children.

It’s been a really special journey to get this far – I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues at Bain, Oasis Johanna school, and everyone who has played a part in helping create this amazing charity!

Together we will help children feel their best at school!