Pupils take a step in the right direction with shoe box delivery
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The scheme aims to deliver the goods to the poorest people in Eastern Europe and Pakistan just in time for Christmas.
Harry Wells sold rubber bracelets with the logo "I Love Islay", which he hand-designed on the island, where he previously lived.
The 11-year-old gave a £700 cheque to Blythswood Care plus £300 to his previous school, Bowmore Primary on Islay, so that his fellow classmates could buy shampoo, soap, socks and other much-needed items to pack into their shoe boxes for Blythswood Care’s appeal.
The youngster went along to the Culduthel Christian Centre with fellow Gaelic Primary pupils to hand deliver the cheque and the 80-plus shoe boxes which pupils at the school had filled for the charity.
Inverness Provost Helen Carmichael also went to meet some of the volunteers who were working to sort hundreds of boxes at the centre.
Numbers are still coming in for this year, but last year more than 121,000 shoe boxes were sent out from the UK – 23,000 of which came from the Highlands.
The shoe boxes are handed out in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Pakistan, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine.
Danny Muschate, who handles the PR and marketing of Blythswood Care’s Christmas Shoe Box Appeal, was stunned by the level of need on his first visit to Bulgaria a decade ago.
He said: "We visited quite a run-down gypsy community and we were in one of the houses, a shack-type house smaller than your average-size bedroom, and a woman with four kids, who was probably in her 20s but looked older, was asked what her favourite item in the shoe box was.
"She said it was shampoo and then she showed us the empty bottle from the previous box the previous year.
"She had made that last the whole year. That really stunned me at the time. I couldn’t even imagine how anyone could make one bottle of shampoo last a whole year."
- In a similar appeal, the last few boxes of goodies are on their way to eastern Europe thanks to members of Inverness Rotary Club.
Every year the club takes part in the Rotary Shoe Box Scheme, filling boxes for children and families.
Youngsters from Duncan Forbes, Hilton and Inshes primaries helped to fill around 250 boxes.
These were added to shoe boxes collected by other rotary clubs across the north which are now on their way to the continent.
