Wells Fargo is sending a stagecoach through London’s East End this-morning (Tues) heading for a school corale.

Riding high are Wells Fargo volunteers who visit Bishop Challoner RC Secondary each week to help pupils get to grips with the Three Rs.

The fourth largest bank in the US has long given up its stagecoach business which helped forge communications across America’s Wild West before the railways.

But nowadays it helps communications another way—getting youngsters to develop their reading and numeracy skills.

Funding is progressively decreasing in many schools, especially in deprived areas like the East End.

So Bishop Challoner has been a Wells Fargo ‘pard-ner’ for three years with a ‘Reading & Number’ scheme, where youngsters who have trouble learning in the classroom get one-to-one time with the volunteers who often become mentors for other school and personal issues.

The replica stagecoach, a throwback to the bank’s historic 19th century foundation, was brought to Europe for the first time ever to take part in Saturday’s Lord Mayor’s Show in the City of London.

So the Wells Fargo volunteers decided while they were here to mosey on down the Commercial Road to look in on their young charges.

They’re no ‘stranger’ to education, though. It is one of the philanthropic bank’s priorities, along with its community projects. Bishop Challoner brings both priorities together.

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Wells Fargo timetable:

- 10.35am Stagecoach leaves Tobacco Dock, Wapping, heading up The Highway into Cannon Street Road, then throwing a right along the Commercial Road.

- 10.50am Vice Principal Nick Soar welcomes the stagecoach to Bishop Challoner ‘coral’.

- 11.05am Pupils gather by stagecoach for talk by Wells Fargo’s Bev Smith, school gardener on hand for horse clean-up duties!

- 12.30pm Stagecoach heads out west, back to Tobacco Dock.