In 2001 South Devon Evangelical Trust (SDET) was established to support Christian workers in churches across south Devon. This led into opportunities being identified to develop Christian based projects within primary schools in and around Torbay. It became evident, however, that in order to pursue these projects we needed to align ourselves with an established charity holding similar objectives. In 2013, SDET became a franchise partner of Exeter ICE Charitable Trust which enabled us to become ICE Torbay and undertake work in local primary schools. That same year Gemma Drew was employed as our Schools Worker and ‘Open the Book’ Coordinator. In September 2015, Nick Pitt joined the team as a Schools Worker as Gemma was leaving to start a family. Throughout 2016 demand for our activities grew steadily, allowing us to start working with several more primary schools.

Christine Hargreaves joined the team as a Schools Worker in January 2017 and a year later, Hazel Sercombe also joined us with half of her time being a Schools Worker and half being our ‘Open the Book’ Coordinator. At the start of 2022, Judith Baker joined the team as our part-time Administrator and in July of that year Christine stepped down from the team to pursue her desire to complete a contemporary chaplaincy course. Karen Silcox joined our team as Finance Officer in October 2022.

All of our RE lessons, lunch clubs and Year 6 transition to secondary school lessons are free to schools and demand remains high. Funding is in place to employ a further two Schools Workers so we can work towards providing more lessons and clubs to the primary school aged children in Torbay.

If you’re interested to explore working for us please click here.

If you’d like to financially support us so we can continue to employ more staff to work in schools please donate through our Stewardship account here.