Staff at building supplies company Kent Blaxill have filled 30 backpacks with tins of food for a charity that helps hungry children.

Mary’s Meals provides a daily meal in school to meet the immediate needs of hungry children and encourage them to gain an education that can help them out of poverty. The charity is currently feeding over one million children.

Monica Hartley, the collection organiser at Kent Blaxill said: “There is a real sense of achievement at being able to arrange something relatively simply that will make such a massive difference to children living in poverty. So many colleagues helped by finding the right items for the backpacks.”

The backpacks will now leave the company’s headquarters in Colchester and go to one of 12 countries where Mary’s Meals operate. Its biggest operation is in Malawi where it provides meals to over 25% of all primary schools across the country.