Charitable Students Donate Christmas Gifts to Local Homelessness Charity
Students from the FLEX department at North Notts College have donated over 35 gift bags brimming with toiletries to local homelessness charity Hope Community Services as part of the charity’s Christmas Appeal.
The charitable students have gathered donations from friends and family and created useful hygiene and gift sets as part of a community action project on their course.
FLEX department student William Clarke has been involved in the project and explains a little more about the services offered by the charity and why the project was chosen.
William said: “Hope Community Services is a community project to help the homeless in our local community of Worksop, they need our help through these difficult times, and with the help of everyone’s donations, we have put together some toiletry gift bags.”
The donation of toiletries is part of wider-ongoing social action involving learners from North Notts College, with students from Retford Post-16 Centre previously involved in filming the charity’s Christmas Appeal video, ‘Homelessness can Happen to Anyone’.
Another FLEX student, Paul Schofield, also got involved in the project, packing bags and helping collect donations.
Paul said: “The reason we are doing this is because it’s a nice thing to do at Christmas. We’re doing a community project in our area and we wanted to help people that are homeless.”
North Notts College FLEX department tutor Jenny Bowker has worked with the students to package the donations and will be delivering the completed packages at the end of November.
Jenny said: “It’s been a fantastic project to get involved in, and our students have gained so much from the project. It links several themes from their curriculum programme into a project that benefits people from the local area.
“Our students have developed their knowledge of community, personal hygiene and volunteering whilst working on their teamwork, organisation and communication skills and behaviours whilst actively helping others.”
North Notts College Progress Tutor Kim Coulthard has coordinated the range of activities across both the Worksop and Retford campuses of North Notts College in aid of Hope Community Services.
Kim said: “I’m so happy to support this cause and by engaging in this social action project learners have understood the barriers, discrimination and stigma which homeless people face.
“It is important for students to make links with their local community and also to gain knowledge of where to go for help should they ever find themselves in similar circumstances. I want to thank all staff and students for their contributions and it’s been great to collaborate with other departments to strengthen this social action project.”