Meet the teenagers giving up their summer holidays to help struggling families in South Shields

Eleven youngsters completed a five mile walk from the Lifeboat Memorial in South Shields to the Morrisons in Seaburn in an effort to raise funds for the town’s Hospitality and Hope food bank.

The group, aged from 15 to 17, met with South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck on Wednesday, August 4, before completing the challenge later that day.

Their efforts were part of a National Citizen Service (NCS) project, which saw the group spend two weeks working together to decide on a fundraising initiative before carrying it out for their chosen charity.

NCS group member, Emily Spalding, 16, said: “It was a social action project that saw us as a team all decide to raise money for Hospitality and Hope... [because] food banks at the minute really need help.

"With the money raised we made boxes up of items that they needed and donated them to the food bank.

“As well as sponsorship we also had donations from mydentist on Dean Road, from businesses on Bede Industrial Estate and from Prestige German Cars.”

The team raised around £200 through sponsorship for the walk and a ‘guess how many sweets are in the jar’ competition on Facebook brought in futher donations.

The youngsters then learned how to budget as they used the money to buy food and essential items in Tesco before donating them to the Hampden Street food bank on Thursday, August 5.

NCS South Tyneside team leader, Cat Fairbairn, 22, and assistant team leader, Georgia Peake, 20, managed the group of young people over the course of the two-week programme, which started on Monday, July 26.

Cat said: “I am really pleased with how motivated they have been to do the programme.

"It was originally ment to be four weeks with a residential, but it ended up being two weeks without a residential because of Covid.

"I am really proud of them, they raised a lot of money for the Hospitality and Hope food bank.

"They really cared about what they chose to do."

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