Education is one of the building blocks, of a purposeful life with opportunity. The opportunity to escape from extreme poverty, the opportunity to improve your own situation, the opportunity to improve life chances for your family, the opportunity to make a positive contribution to your community.

Yet young people face real barriers in gaining access to education.

For many years we have supported Education Plus in Costa Rica where school uniform is mandatory. No uniform means no school. No school means no education and no education leads to lost opportunities. It costs about £50 to provide a complete uniform and the books and pens, pencils that families have to provide for their child to go to school. This is beyond many families resources. Education Plus helps to fill that gap.

Melon Mission is a school in Kenya we have supported for a few years now. Melon Mission provides a Christian education to children of families who simply cannot afford the cost of other schools. Without support none of these children would be at school.

For its 300 or so junior class students Melon Mission needs 1,400 books to teach the new national curriculum. The students share, two students to one book. This will cost a little over £3,000, say £10 a student.

Barriers deny children access to education; sometimes the barrier is a proper uniform, other times it's the books necessary for guided study. This Christmas we will remove those barriers for children in Costa Rica and Kenya through our continuing, fruitful relationship with Education Plus and Melon Mission.

As we approach Christmas, keep in mind all the opportunities you have had because of the education you received first as a child and then as an adult.

And please keep in your prayers all the students at Melon Mission and those supported by Education Plus; that they are able to go to school, to continue in their school and gain access to education and all its possibilities.

The money from this appeal will be divided equally between Education Plus and Melon Mission. Education Plus need to buy full uniforms for 60 of the children they support. Melon Mission have 300 junior class children who need text books for the new curriculum. It would be a stretch to raise £6,000 needed to help these 360 children. But we can try.

Think of it this way: every £100 we collectively give will directly help transform the lives of 6 children. Our collective £1,000 will help 60 children; £2,000 helps 120 children; £4,000 helps 240 children; £6,000 helps 360 children.

Please give what you feel able to give.