Young volunteers donate care boxes to homeless people in Wyre Forest

The volunteers - from the Wyre Forest area - decided as part of their social action phase, that they wanted to give something back to their local community.

After speaking to a homeless man in Kidderminster town centre, the group decided they wanted to help homeless people in the district by collecting items for them and putting them into care boxes.

The group designed leaflets, which they delivered to people in the area and set about collecting donations of any kind which could help a homeless person this winter.

Alex Smith, NCS assistant coordinator, said: "They managed to fill five trolleys worth of donations and three cars. When it came to putting the boxes together, I could not believe the amount of clothes, food, blankets and toiletries, which had been donated.

"The young people spent four hours making up a large number of care boxes with various things in them."

Food which was donated by the local community was given to Simply Limitless's night cafe, while the care boxes were donated to Wyre Forest Nightstop.

Judith Ford, chief executive of Wyre Forest Nightstop, said: "We are delighted to receive Christmas Hampers from the NCS young volunteers. Christmas can be a very difficult time for many of the young people we work with and these donations are both timely and thoughtful.

"It is great that the young volunteers have taken the time to think of others in need and we are really pleased they chose Wyre Forest Nightstop as their charity on this occasion."

Mr Smith added: "I have worked on NCS programmes for a few years and have never seen a social action project like this. The amount of donations given by the local community was overwhelming and on behalf of the young people a big thank you must go to everybody who donated.

"This project's success was all down to the young people's hard work and efforts as a team and to see them grow and develop through their time on NCS has been amazing."