We've all seen how many homeless people there are on the streets of London. It's fairly obvious that the living standards on the streets are pretty dire. Its cold, dirty, and dehumanising.

In last 2 years homelessness in london has been increasing drastically. When I was younger homeless people were generally drug addicts who were entitled to benefits. These days with the increased cost of living in london in particular and the freeze on benefits, Its difficult for people to find somewhere to live. I was particularly struck by the story of the first homeless person i met, he was my age, grammar schooled and had a physics degree. He'd lost his job and flat and been on the streets for 2 weeks. He was kind and after one night out the house had lost his phone and ID and was struggling to reach help. Most of the shelters in London are heavily over subscribed and without ID they wern't helping him. Other charities were often only there to help drug addicts, women or other specific groups.

Having a Chat with the first homeless person I spoke to, Moses he described what it was like on the street. Its hard to make money and lots of people mistreat homeless people kicking them and spitting on them. Also being in his situation essentials are hard to pick up. Getting a rucksack for example would mean having to go into a shop and leaving his suitcase vulnerable to theft. Prices in the shops are often much more expensive than online. Online our mats, rucksacks and 4 season sleeping bags could all be purchased for £35/40 but in a camping store that would most likely be double or triple unless you know where to shop.

Moses told me how good it felt when he was given a sleeping bag from a lady. He'd had most of his stuff stolen the first night. A backpack is a massive help as well, they're expensive for a homeless person and without one its very difficult for them to go into shops or walk around london to reach day shelters.

Some people think that giving to the homeless will result in them just selling the stuff and buying drugs. After giving to our homeless people we also gave them cheap pay as you go phones so we could keep in touch with them and see how they got on. A week later when we visited our homeless people, we found that if we'd given someone something they didn't need or had already, the spare or old one was usually passed to another homeless person to help them out.

Far from being addicts, most of the people we met were sober, kind, many British and all of them keen to do something with there lives. Living on the streets is a vicious circle. without an address you can't get ID, without ID, you can't get a bank account, without a bank account and ID and not to mention rest, you can't get a job. and so it continues. Wed love to do more to help these people, the backpacks are just the start, as least we know they'll be a little warmer at night and a clean pair of socks and a toothbrush goes a long way to making them feel a little better.

I'm sure we've all been in that situation where you want to do something but just giving a few coins seems a bit useless. And the small amount of money you do give goes toward essentials like food, rather than anything that can improve living conditions. You wish you could do more but don't know how.

We recently created 5 backpacks filled with essentials such as hand sanitiser, warm socks, gloves, pants, sleeping bags, wet wipes and camping towels etc and gave them out to homeless people around central London. We also took the time to chat to them and hear their stories. The response was heartwarming. They were so taken back, almost speechless with gratitude. One young man called Derek had to hold back the tears of happiness when he saw what we were giving him. Most people just walk straight past, he said.

Just giving a couple of coins here and there isn't going to make much of a difference to their lives. We want to try and make a bigger impact, try to give them the essentials they need to improve living standards. Possibly enough to give them the morale boost they need to get the motivation to get themselves off the streets.

We hope this is just the start of something and we can find funding to continue to do this. But you've got to start somewhere, so please help us raise enough money to create 20 more backpacks. The cost of each backpack is approximately £50 which includes:

Backpack, sleeping bag, socks x 2, gloves, hat, pants x 2, wipes, hand sanister, microfibre towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, plasters, wet wipes, water, nuts, floor matt with silver foil.

Thanks Charis & Emma