Students help shelter

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Students from Hopwood Hall College raised £150 and much needed donations of clothes and toys for women at St Gabriel’s temporary accommodation in the run up to Christmas.

St Gabriel’s is made up of 12 self-contained flats for women aged 16- 21 who are pregnant or with babies that are homeless.

Hopwood Hall College’s Access to Higher Education students wanted to help out the shelter and, in turn, the local women who so desperately need the help of St Gabriel’s.

Their tutor Julie Brindle explains, “One of my Access Level 2 students was at St Gabriel’s and spoke highly of the support and guidance they give to the women. She explained how little these women have, very often just the clothes they stand in, and how they benefit from donations of money or goods, such as toys, books clothing etc.”

Over 20 students, all aged over 19 worked together to fundraise for St Gabriel’s by organising a raffle.

Students dug deep and donated their own gifts including chocolates, cosmetics and wine. They also made up several hampers plus individual items to raffle. They worked hard selling tickets both within and outside the College.

In total, their raffle raised £150 in cash and lots of donations of baby clothes, toys etc, too.

The manager of St Gabriel’s Debra Higson is very keen to bring awareness to the plight of these women and was delighted with the offer of help from the students. She attended the College on Tuesday 14 December to meet the students, explain a little bit about how St Gabriel’s operates and to see the drawing of the raffle.

Ms Higson said that the money was to be spent on something that all the residents would find useful, but she is yet to decide what that will be; one idea is to pay for an artist to come to Gabriel’s and teach them how to draw; they have organised something like this before and it was found to be very therapeutic to the women.

This is the first time that Hopwood hall College students have done any fundraising for St Gabriel’s, but intend to so much more in the future. Some of the Access students will be attending St Gabriel’s later this month to find out how their money was spent.