Forton schoolchildren helped to make a difference to the lives of children less fortunate than themselves when they helped Garstang Soroptimists to fill backpacks for the Backpack Project, which aims to send filled backpacks to children who really need them, enabling them to attend school and gain an education that can help them escape poverty when they grow up.

They filled 10 backpacks with clothes, flip flops, hygiene items, stationery and school equipment, and then labelled them with the appropriate age for a boy or a girl. The backpacks are put in sacks of 10 and taken by container to countries like Malawi, where they are distributed to local schools.

The children realised how hard it would be to go to school without such basic equipment and were very pleased to know that they had helped 10 children to fulfil their dream of having an education.