Bex Wilson with one of the many mattresses being given to the needy,,,
The deputy head of an inner city school has been praised for her work providing beds for pupils who used to turn up too tired to learn.
Bex Wilson was teaching an English lesson when she noticed the sleepy little boy in her class.
At the end she asked, “Are you tired?”
“I’m always tired, Miss,” he replied. “I’ve got no bed.”
Bex, the deputy headteacher of a 700-pupil primary school in inner-city Leeds, was shocked.
“I went home and looked at my bed. I thought, ‘How can I teach kids who don’t have a bed then come home to mine?
“I’d taught in Leeds for years, grown up here and seen poverty, but I’d become desensitised to it.
“I’d taught that boy every day for four months and had no idea that he, his brother and his sister were sleeping on a bug-infested cushion.”
Bex decided to help. She called her dad, Mark, who had links with a bed factory. Soon, Mark, Bex and her husband Dan were driving to the boy’s home with three new beds.
Bex felt pretty pleased with herself.
SUPER TEACHER
“I thought I would turn up like a super-teacher, deliver these beds, tick the ‘do something nice for others’ box then carry on with my life.”
She was in for a shock. The house was empty except for one plastic garden chair and a single lightbulb. The cupboards were bare and the kids had drunk warm milk for dinner.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” says Bex. “It was so obvious beds were just the start of what they needed. It changed everything for me.”
She set out to gather a sofa, other second-hand furniture and a TV for the family, and worked with mum Gena to help her write her CV and apply for jobs.
Twelve weeks later Gena surprised Bex by appearing at the school gates with £600.
“I want you to take this money and do what you did for me for other families like mine. You were the light in my darkest day when I thought no one cared. You changed everything,” Gena told her, explaining she had found a job and enrolled at a college.
Since then, Bex has gone on to launch Zarach, a bed poverty charity which has now provided more than 1,300 beds for children who had none.
She has seen God move miraculously too.
“I’ve stood in church with tears pouring down my face, knowing what’s in my inbox in terms of referrals and having to decide who gets a bed and who doesn’t.
“One week, someone said to me, ‘God told me to bring my chequebook to church today and give you £3,000.’ That was the exact amount we needed to buy a bed for every child that had been referred that week!”
And last month Bex was the surprise guest on the BBC’s The One Show as they said a very big thank you on behalf of every kid who sleeps well at night on a Zarach bed.
