A CHARITABLE project aimed at equipping the homeless in East Lancashire with life’s essentials is looking for donations.

The Rucksack Project will take place on Christmas Eve and will see volunteers hand out rucksacks filled with food and warm clothing to people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.

MORE TOP STORIES:

People who want to help are being asked to go to charity shops or rummage through their wardrobes and cupboards, and find a rucksack, sleeping bag, gloves, a hat, a fleece, underwear, socks and food to fill rucksack packs, which will be distributed to both the men and women sleeping rough in Blackburn.

Each rucksack will contain a fleece or jumper, a hat, scarf, and gloves, two pairs of socks, two sets of underwear, a toothbrush, a sleeping bag, a flask, tins of beans, soup, or other food with ringpulls, other non-perishable food items, a spoon, and crossword puzzles or word searches and pens or an old mobile phone.

People who cannot afford to donate a whole rucksack and can just donate a few items, which will be used by volunteers to make up full packs. The packs are being given out at a meal on Christmas Eve, at St Barnabas Church in Johnston Street, Blackburn.

Anyone who is homeless is invited to visit the church throughout the day, where there will be several Christmas dinner sittings.

Organiser Wes Hall, 32, from Burnley, also runs a weekly soup kitchen, said: “I’ve been homeless and I’ve walked around the streets on Christmas Eve.

“I understand there are so many problems going on in people’s lives. This time of year there is the highest suicide rate.

“Rather than just feeling sorry for themselves in a room on their own, people can come where there’s a community of people who actually care. They’ve got nothing. They’re living an existence. They just need some way of breaking free from the mundane day-to-day nonsense.

“If anybody comes across someone in Lancashire who is homeless they can signpost them. It will be the biggest meal they’ve had all year.

“We’ll be there all day. There’ll be lots of different sittings. We’ve been donated 11 turkeys, but the poultry farmer has said I’ve got to take along a team to pluck them”

Items are being collected at locations including Toast Of The Town Cafe in Nelson, Atrium Legal Services, Rossendale, The Fuzzy Duck Food Company in Clayton-le-Moors, Beauty Box in Burnley, The Commercial Public House in Colne, and St Barnabas Church and Go Outdoors in Blackburn.