Riverside College helps to feed futures with Mary’s Meals

Skills for Life and ESOL students at Riverside College have been working hard to collect donations for the Mary’s Meals Backpack Project.

Mary’s Meals is a charity which sets up school feeding projects in some of the world’s poorest areas where poverty has prevented children from gaining an education. The charity feeds over £1.1 million children every day as they attend school across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America.

The Backpack Project aims to fill backpacks with useful item donations, such as cutlery, exercise books, stationary, canned food, toiletries and clothes. The backpacks are then sent off to the charity to be given to the children.

The students chose The Backpack Project because they realised they had lots of items at home that could be put to a good cause and help those in need. The cause has been a big success so far, with many donations collected from other students, college staff and family members. The collecting will continue until July 2016.

Lois Magee, who studies Maths and English at Riverside, took part in the cause and works at retail store Next. Lois spoke with her employer about the charity and, touched by the cause, they agreed to donate items of clothing that had gone unsold in sales. This has inspired the store to now set up their own charity donation scheme which aims to make use of unsold clothes, which would previously have been thrown away after the sales.

Chelsey Murdoch, Skills for Life Programme Area Leader, said “The Backpack Project has been a big success and we have had lots of very generous donations so far with many more to come. These donations will hopefully make a difference by helping to provide a child in need with an education. Thank you to everyone who has helped.”

If you have any items you would like to donate towards The Backpack Project, please contact Chelsey Murdoch, Skills for Life Programme Area Leader, on 0151 257 2137.

Riverside staff member Yvonne Gibbon is a member of Soroptimist International Great Britain & Ireland, the group has been supporting Mary’s Meals and inspired the original idea. For more information, click here http://sigbi.org/widnes/