Sunderland teenagers help feed the homeless in citizen project

The summer project has seen a group of 12 young people and two leaders volunteer at Soul Kitchen based at Bethany City Church, Burdon Road, in Sunderland, which works to provide food for homeless people.

The group made up of youngsters aged 15 and 16 sent the morning at the kitchen as part of the NCS social action project.

The NCS project lasts four weeks and sees the group of young people live together at an outdoor activity centre where they take on new challenges, spend a week learning new skills and then a week focusing in social action projects such as volunteering.

Leader Brittnae Henry, a Canadian biomedical student at Sunderland University, said the project had also seen some of the youngsters volunteer at Sunderland based organisation, ‘Happier Days for Strays,’ which looks after abandoned and homeless animals.

The 22-year-old, who has worked with support worker Danny Cook on the project, said: “NCS is about getting a group of passionate people together to volunteer for a few causes.

“The young people come from schools across Sunderland and Washington and help out people in the local area.

“NCS carries out talks in hundreds of schools each summer to let students know about our projects.
“The groups get to choose which projects they want to be working on, help to raise funds and volunteer over the course of four days.
“The aim is to get them to learn valuable life skills and various other skills which will help them in further education or in the workplace.

“The whole project last four weeks and the last two weeks are about social action.”
To get involved in the project with NCS please visit: www.ncsyes.co.uk or visit Underdogs NCS on Facebook.