SCHOOLCHILDREN are on a mission to help feed struggling local families by donating vegetables harvested from their allotment.
Pupils from Edwalton Primary School, in Wellin Lane, presented a crop of butternut squash, tomatoes and carrots, worth around £32, to Edwalton Community Church yesterday.
Volunteers at the church, also in Wellin Lane, will dish out the vegetables to people who have been nominated to receive a helping hand.
Pupil George Chant, ten, of West Bridgford, said: "When I go home after school, my mum makes my dinner and there is food on my plate. But some people don't have food on their plates, so we are helping them by growing some."
The school, which already has a small farm with pigs, a goat and chickens on-site, has been working on crops since July.
Luca Jimenez, 10, who is in year six at the school, said: "We dug up the soil and put some potatoes in and then had to look after them; we watered them and made sure they were warm.
"It is really good fun watching them grow and it took a week to see leaves coming out of the soil.
"They are going to be our Christmas potatoes and we will be giving them to charity so they can have Christmas dinner."
Edwalton was chosen by national charity Foodshare to pilot its community garden programme, which aims to get schools growing and donating food to the most vulnerable people in their neighbourhoods.
The school currently donates to the church and the Friary Drop-In Centre for homeless people.
Church helper Dianne Swanson said the food would be used as part of the church's Blessings In A Box project.
She added: "Over the past two years, we have donated about £5,000 of food to people in the community.
"It is wonderful to see the children getting so excited and enthused about growing the food and wanting to help others."
The Foodshare project will be part of the school's curriculum for the next two years and will include healthy eating workshops for children and parents at the Eat Yourself Fit Cafe.
They will also be using a "Totaliser" computer to record, weigh and measure the their harvest and see how much it would cost to buy in a supermarket.
The children's hard work is being used to promote the international Feeding The 5,000' campaign run in partnership with Foodshare, which was set-up to reduce the amount of food people waste.
Foodshare patron Penney Poyzer said: "Looking at the vegetables which the children have donated, a lot of them wouldn't even get on the supermarket shelves because they are not commercially beautiful.
"But the nutrition and the flavour of the produce will be something else."
