Students at Samworth Church Academy, Mansfield, responded to a call from two sixth formers with an overwhelming act of generosity.

The sixth form students, Beth Mortiboy and Pierce Holland wanted to collect food items for two local food banks leading up to Christmas and put out the call to the Academy to donate an item in return for not wearing their school uniform for the day.

But while Beth and Pierce had estimated that the Academy would collect 500 items for each food bank, at the allotted hour, more than 2000 items were donated by staff, students and families of Samworth Church Academy.

The foodbanks were The Beacon and The Sherwood Forest Foodbank, where Kate Colclough said: “Such an amazing achievement for the students! We are so grateful for their huge donation. They collected just over 500kg (or half a ton!) which translates into 1,190 meals for families in crisis.

“Their care, kindness and compassion for those who are less fortunate than themselves is astonishing, they should all be so proud of their efforts. The Principal and staff should be very proud of all the students’ efforts.”

Student Beth Mortiboy said that fellow sixth form students helped to unpack and load the mountain of food. “I was genuinely overwhelmed by the response we had, as our original target for the collection was 1000 items in total. So to double our target was phenomenal. It was amazing to see how the whole Academy worked together to help the hungry in the local community this Christmas time.”

James Fenby, Leader of Humanities at the Academy, said that the response to the call for help took everyone by surprise. “We were overwhelmed by the generosity of our students, parents and staff and raised more than twice that we expected. This will go some way to making sure local people are not hungry this Christmas.”