![\"Students](\"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/IMG_0659-300x225.jpg\")
Our students have also been praised for helping to feed dozens of families this Christmas.\u00a0In the past few weeks, hundreds of items of food have been collected throughout the 24 classes of the Junior Learning Village. They will help make up the 50 food parcels which are being prepared for distribution on Christmas Eve and delivered to the 100 adults and children who every week rely on handouts from the Cramlington food bank.<\/p>\n
One of its co-ordinators, Rev Steve Wilkinson from St Nicholas Church, said the students\u2019 action demonstrated a \u201cgroundswell of care and concern\u201d for the people outside the school community.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s beyond amazing. We often think of kids as being selfish and not understanding altruism. But they all realise that they are in a fortunate place and they ought to be able to help other people.\u201d\u00a0The school\u2019s food collection was started by a group of six year 8 friends. One of them,12-year-old Lois, said she was surprised when she heard about the number of people who needed help from the food bank. \u201cIt\u2019s really sad and that\u2019s why we wanted to help \u2013 particularly at Christmas,\u201d said Rachel, 13.<\/p>\n
Lisa Burton, pastoral co-ordinator at the Junior Learning Village, said: \u201cI am incredibly proud of the girls. They do everything with a smile and it\u2019s all done in their own time. We\u2019ve collected for the food bank before but that was led by staff. This is the first time that the children have led it themselves and the response has been fantastic. Every day students are coming in with full carrier bags.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an assembly at the school, Rev Wilkinson told students that some parts of the media were wrong in labelling people who use food banks as scroungers and, not far away in Newcastle\u2019s West End, the country\u2019s biggest food bank feeds 1000 people every week. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve been to houses where parents hadn\u2019t eaten for three or four days because they were giving what they had to their children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In south east Northumberland the closure of major employers like Alcan and the cuts in local government staffing have had a major impact. \u201cWomen and men who have worked all their lives suddenly find that the company or organisation they have worked for isn\u2019t able to continue and they\u2019re made redundant. Their redundancy pay will only go so far and trying to find new work and access benefits is incredibly hard at the moment, particularly in the North East. \u201cA friend of mine finished work on 1 August and he immediately started looking for a job but he hasn\u2019t found one and he can\u2019t yet claim benefit for his family, so there is no income. That\u2019s a common story because it takes a while to find a new job or move from employment to benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rev Wilkinson said the Cramlington food bank, led by Jim and Janice Rynn and helped by volunteers from all the town\u2019s churches as well as non-churchgoers, offers emergency help to fill a gap. \u00a0\u201cWhen you look at the news you see these tales of worldwide horror of war and famine and it\u2019s very easy to become numbed to the need that\u2019s nearer home. We think of ourselves as an affluent 21st century society, but there are big cracks that people fall down,\u201d he said.
\nFor more details about the food bank visit www.cramlingtoncofe.org.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our students have also been praised for helping to feed dozens of families this Christmas.\u00a0In the past few weeks, hundreds of items of food have been collected throughout the 24 classes of the Junior Learning Village. They will help make up the 50 food parcels which are being prepared for distribution on Christmas Eve and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[114,163,194,193],"class_list":["post-3170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","tag-charity","tag-church","tag-cramlington-learning-village","tag-students"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 06:03:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6528,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions\/6528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}