by Angela Coleacole@thekmgroup.co.uk

You Can Help – it’s official!

More than 3,000 cans were collected along with hundreds of other edible items during our campaign, You Can Help, run with Maidstone Day Centre.

Dozens of scarves and gloves and other bits of clothing and toiletries were also donated by generous readers.

Schools and pubs joined supermarkets in the push to collect for those in need, while trolleys with donations at supermarkets were filled to the brim as Maidstone dug deep for our 2010 appeal, which ended this week.

The Friends of Maidstone Day Centre, which supports the centre in Knightrider Street, Maidstone, and helped collect all the donations stored more than 3,000 tins at chairman Richard Leech’s home in Linton, near Maidstone.

The centre provides daytime accommodation and showers for rough sleepers and “sofa surfers” and recently opened a house in which it provides short-term lets to people who are temporarily homeless.

Mr Leech said: “This year there has definitely been a shift towards more schools helping; we have had several come to us and ask to get involved. This year we also had a pub for the first time.”

The First and Last pub in Bower Place, Maidstone, got involved because one regular had been homeless.

Landlady Cara Cope, who runs the pub with husband Adrian, said: “We are a tiny little pub, so we don’t have hundreds of regulars, but our hamper was regularly filled up with mainly perishables. People were generous.”

Other supporters of the appeal included Maidstone Grammar School, New Line Learning school, the Cornwallis Accademy, Tesco Express in Loose Road, Tesco in Tovil and Lunsford Park, Larkfield; Morrisons in Sutton Road, Maidstone, and New Hythe Lane, Larkfield, and Iceland in the Mall Chequers.
If you would like to help, support or join the Friends of Maidstone Day Centre any time during the year, email fomdc@btinternet.com