GMMA Academy's students, under its not for profit branch called "British Sports Youth Trust" has started a charity project after last Christmas 2018, called "Let's keep the Christmas Spirit going". The students got together and decided to create a Go Fund Me link to collect some funds towards helping homeless people in our community and that's how we started this project with a target of £500. We have managed to raise so much more. Created great impact and awareness amongst our community and we even got people joining us from outside our circle. We have decided to continue with this great initiative through all of the year on a monthly basis. This project is currently self-funded hence your donations on JustGiving will be a great help and support to our volunteers that delivers this amazing community project.

Since the 22nd of January and until the 16th June EVERY single Sunday until June our team went out of their way to spare free time, gather some hot meals and distribute them around central London.

Sanitary items, clothes, wipes, sandwiches, hot drinks, socks, underwear, shoes, deodorants … were the items we were trying to gather for these people in need. And if today we are sharing this link again this is because we would like to carry on.

We managed to create some very strong bonds with some homeless over the past few months: Peter, Sam, Andrei (x2), James, Jamal, Bryan, Eduardo, Zigmut… they all have their stories and reason to be where they are but before all they are human and deserve respect, dignity and consideration.

Story1: Peter is such a happy person, it's rare when we see him and he is not smiling. He really wants to get out of the street and he is the happiest when he gets a job. His last short contracted job was in construction and it was important for him to be "well dressed" and smell nice. Thanks to us he was able to be seen as a "normal" person and he could hide his status in the eyes of others workers. Fortunately we met him a few days before he started one of his last job in May. He really needed some safety shoes in order to start his job and not get injured however these shoes are expensive. By keeping in touch week by week we really created strong bonds and relationship and we managed to find through our connection a pair of size 9 safety shoes for Peter (as well as a new trousers and some shirts) so he could start in the best conditions.

Story2:Thanks to Piotr (one of our volunteer) we managed to send Staciek back to Poland. He had a terrible story! Originally he met a man in Wroclaw who offered him to come to London in order to get a job, make some money and live comfortably. At 45 years old he decided to take his chance and despite not speaking English at all he flew to London and started working as a brick layer. This person who facilitated his transfer and accommodation took his passport and kicked him out of the place he was staying in. He spent 6 weeks in the street in cold winter time, started drinking again, an old habit that he thought was behind him... until he met Piotr and the group weeks by weeks. Piotr felt for him straight away, he gave him a job so he wasn't going to return back home empty pocket. He also got him a room on site and booked him a flight to return to Poland.

We are looking to create so many other beautiful stories on a monthly basis for now until the cold winter comes again and we will do it more regularly.

Your donation will be invaluable help. With £2 we can feed 1 person and provide a hot drink and sometimes more.

All donations are welcome (sleeping bags, brand new socks, sanitary items, deodorants, soaps, duvets, shoes, new underwear…) and if you want to join us for the distribution on Sunday please contact us!