COMMUNITY-MINDED youngsters have worked to help tackle holiday hunger in the run up to the school holidays.

Riding Mill Cubs began collecting for West Northumberland Food Bank earlier this year after the idea was put forward to help them collect their community badges.

Cubs leader Helen Yates said: “We were looking for some ideas for the Cubs to get their community badges and this came up as a suggestion.

“It was around about the time we were thinking about Lent and we thought rather than giving something up, why don’t we give something back to the community instead, so we started a Lent box for the food bank.”

When the cubs visited the food bank to deliver their items at Easter time, they stacked the shelves and took part in a question and answer session to find out more about what the food bank did and the demands it was facing.

Helen added: “We found out there’s an issue in the summer holidays when children are off school – there’s this hunger gap in the summer holidays.

“Even though they had already earned their community badge the Cubs made it very clear to us they wanted to continue collecting for the food bank.

“We are really proud of them that it was their idea to keep it going.”

The group headed back to the food bank last week to deliver the next batch of items they had collected, which they had managed by accompanying family on weekly food shops and through donations from friends and family.

Each week they focused on different categories, whether it be tinned food or toiletries, to cover all bases of what the foodbank needs.