Eastlea Community School students and staff collect food for the homeless at Christmas

Eastlea Community School students and staff produced a major success this year with a collection of 5,735 items going to those that were without a home at Christmas.

The school ran its fifth successive year of collections to support Crisis, a charity working to help the homeless.

Josena Walker, assistant vice principal, said: “We do it because we’ve realised in recent years there is a big problem with people not having food, especially for Christmas. It’s a problem we’ve even experienced as a school with some of our students, where some of the families can’t feed their children.

“As a school we’ve captured a sense of community and we try to get more every year.

“All the students normally bring something in but some go to some great lengths like raising money outside of school. So it’s a really good thing to do.”

Students and staff started collecting non-perishable food to beat their previous records from October half-term until the middle of December with the items being collected on December 17.

The community school has managed to increase its collection totals each year. About 800 items were collected in the first year and last year it reached 4,545.

Neil M Kennedy, resources manager at Crisis at Christmas, thanked the school for its efforts.