When Samuel Bagley from the Christian charity Bolton Urban Outreach came to speak at Horwich Rotary he outlined their newest project ‘Fresh as a Daisy’. “If you’ve got no food, you’ve got no money for sanitary protection. If you are a Mum with two teenage girls, that’s a lot of money each month.” So Urban Outreach is now seeking to help the estimated 20,000 women and girls in Bolton who struggle to cope with the cost of buying essential sanitary products every month. He urged people to include sanitary projects in their Grub Tubs collecting food for their Storehouse food bank to help families in poverty in Bolton.

Sam Bagley shared Urban Outreach’s compassion with passion at our lunch meeting as he spoke about their work over the summer with an army of volunteers to help to provide 1500 lunches each day during the summer holidays for children and young people who would have normally received a free school meal due to low incomes.

Before he left to go to supervise the sorting of the tons of food received from Churches and Schools from Harvest Festival collections he spoke about the Christmas hampers they were involved in providing for families facing poverty and homelessness because of problems with universal credit benefits, domestic violence, and other issues. They ask schools, churches, local business and other local organisations to pledge and collect Christmas food items to help make this a reality for hundreds of families in Bolton, giving them a little bit of good news and hope at Christmas.

President of Horwich David Griffiths presented Sam Bagley with a cheque for £200 for Urban Outreach’s work. The money was raised by Rotary Charity Fundraisers through the sponsorship of competitors taking part in the Ironman UK Bolton event.