Little Kids with a BIG Hearts!

P6 children from St Rose of Lima primary school in Easterhouse, Glasgow presented 70 large boxes of food to the local Salvation Army to help support the work of the food bank.

This random act of kindness was the idea of 10 year old Abbi May, who had been impressed by the work of Mary’s Meals, which is a global initiative that combines education and food poverty in other countries.

Abbi has all the hallmarks of a budding entrepreneur, she immediately lobbied the head teacher and parents to find out what she could do to help others.

The school linked up with ‘Fastworks’ a project run by volunteer parents including Anne Marie and husband and wife team Lorraine & Robert who regularly run programmes to teach school children the value of putting something back into their local community, the most recent project featured healthy meal and budget planning.

As part of their research they discovered that the local branch of the Salvation Army regularly provides a food bank for people from Easterhouse who are struggling to pays bills and provide food for their families.

School Parent Lorraine, explained,

“The children are an inspiration; they asked other children and parents to donate any unwanted food and explained it was going to a good cause to help other people who are finding things difficult at the moment. The response was amazing, my husband Robert and I have had to live with all the boxes in our living room for weeks, this is a great day not only for The Salvation Army but we get our living room back !”

10 year old Abbi said,

“It was easy really, I just started to tell all my friends that other people needed our help and we started to give up some of our favourite foods so we could give it to the food bank.”                                                           

Volunteer parent, Anne Marie explained,

“As part of the education element of the project the children were taken to a local supermarket where they had to find 7 evening meals for a family of four on a tight budget – it was a valuable lesson as it made them realise the true cost of food and what it means to budget. We also had Tom into speak to the children, where they found out that it was not only people with no jobs that needed help from the food bank, sometimes people who were on short term work need a temporary help from week to week – it was an eye opener!”

Tom Mitchell from Easterhouse Salvation Army said,

“We are completely humbled and overwhelmed by the generosity from the children; we normally bring a car to collect donations but this morning we had to bring along out van as they collected so much! We want to thank them on behalf of the many people from Easterhouse who will benefit from their kindness and selfless act.”