10 year old Ashton attend’s Brownies on a Monday evening at St. Clare’s Church in Newton Aycliffe, during her time there she has noticed posters and collection bins for the food bank. She had asked her father what a food bank was, which he explained to her.
Ashton thought this was really sad that families don’t have enough food to eat and she has more than enough.
Ashton said “as it was approaching Christmas could she use £10 of her pocket money to buy advent calendars to give to the food bank, as if these families can’t afford food then maybe the children won’t have even tasted chocolate”.
Her father told her that this was a lovely idea and very thoughtful and it was suggested that maybe she could do some fundraising and buy more advent calendars. She loved this idea, so we set up a GoFundMe page and asked Ashton to right a short piece as to why she was fundraising.
She told her story again and asked for donations and this week she proudly donated a huge total of £157 worth of advent calendars, long life fruit juice and chocolate bars, biscuits and treats for the families in need (after checking with the food bank these are the treats that mean the most at this time of year but they just don’t have).
When asked why she chose advent calendars instead of sweets her reply was “with an advent calendar the children can be happy every day until Christmas”.
Ashton was so incredibly happy when giving her donation and said it gave her a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
The family are so very proud of such a thoughtful act and her understanding that there are so many other people who are struggling for the basics in life and that she really wanted to help in such a small way with her pocket money initially, but encouraged others to think.
The family thought this story worthy of print and forwarded the story to Newton News. Ashton is hopeful that this will encourage others to think about the smallest donation.
