My Civil Service Fast Stream Fund Group are raising money and awareness for two charities that help the most dispossessed and vulnerable people in our society: Glass Door Homeless Charity and the Helen Bamber Foundation. As part of these efforts, we will all be taking on the "living below the breadline" challenge where we have to find ways to feed ourselves for 5 days on just £1 a day from 6th-10th November.

Those of you who know me will know that I like food, and this will be Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult. But that's the point. This is an experience far too many people face not as a challenge or a choice but as a necessity, both at home and further afield.

One of the reasons in particular that we are supporting Glass Door is that they run London’s largest emergency winter night shelter network, providing a safe, warm place to sleep for up to 100 men and women a night in partnership with churches across West London. Year-round, men and women with nowhere else to turn can find drop-in centres during the day and the support they need to end their homelessness. Glass Door night shelters save lives, and the support services help change lives.

Please give generously, both as moral support for this challenge I'm clearly going to find grim, and to make sure that, this winter, at least some of the 1000 or so people who have no choice but to sleep rough on London's streets will, for some of the time at least, have a warm and safe bed to go to at night, are well fed, and gain access to a support network able to give them a fighting chance at turning their lives around.