Results of Food & Clothing Collection 2024

The Transition Year students involved in the food collection would like to extend a heartfelt thank-you to everyone who supported them this week.

In addition to collecting food at school, this group of students also spent a day working in Swords Central and Swords Pavilions Shopping Centre. Positioned outside Dunnes Stores, SuperValu and Penneys with a trolley, they asked shoppers going in to consider buying one extra item of food or clothing for the homeless. The customers at these locations responded with incredible generosity with many of them buying far more than one extra item. 

The students were excellent representatives for our school. In fact, one customer who interacted with the students even took the time to ring the school office, praising the students’ friendliness, manners and gratitude. This was a lovely phone call to get and is reflective of the attitude and enthusiasm the students brought to the entire effort.

Overall, the campaign was a great success and below is a small sample of what we collected.

Dunnes Stores, SuperValu and School Donations

• 9,100 tea bags
• 183 kg of pasta 
• 32kg of pasta sauces
• 26 kg of rice 
• 7 kg of noodles
• 12 kg of porridge
• 1,574 nappies
• 13kg / 19 boxes of cereal
• 114 kg of tinned food
• 393 packets of crisps
• 60 mince pies
• 133 sanitary products
• 2,029 sanitary wipes
• 70 toothbrushes

Penneys

When added up, the students collected €4,318 worth of goods from Penneys! This includes:

• 196 hats
• 620 pairs of socks
• 322 pairs of gloves
• 191 pairs of underwear
• 17 pairs of shoes
• 5 coats
• 60 jumpers
• 51 children sets
• 55 toothbrushes
• 42 packets of wipes

The TY students would like to thank the management of Swords Central, Swords Pavilions Shopping Centre, SuperValu, Dunnes Stores and Penneys for facilitating the event. Thank-you also to the parents who gave up their time to transport the goods from Swords back to school.

According to figures published by Focus Ireland last month, the number of homeless people is at a record high of 14,486 people. (When we did this collection last year, the figure was 12,691 – which was also the record high for the time.) 

All items were donated to the soup kitchen “Friends helping Friends.” “Friends helping Friends” is a soup kitchen based on Westmoreland Street twice a week. They provide hot meals, hot drinks, snacks, sandwiches and clothes for up to 300 men, women and children every night. They also provide food parcels for people living in food poverty. The soup kitchen is run entirely by volunteers and they rely 100% on donations of food and clothing from the public.

For more information on this organisation and the work they do, please click the links below. 

https://www.facebook.com/friendshelpingfriendsDub/

https://www.facebook.com/friendshelpingfriendsDub/videos/448111389188384