SOUTH SOMERSET NEWS: School in a Bag shop is going to need a bigger wall!

THE School in a Bag pop-up charity shop in the Quedam Shopping Centre in Yeovil is proving a huge hit with supporters.

The SIAB, which is based at Chilthorne Domer, took on one of the units in the Quedam earlier this month and has been selling merchandise and Early Bird tickets for the 2017 Home Farm Festival, its big money-spinner of the year.

But people have been also able to buy and pack a SchoolBag which is crammed with everyday school essentials such as pens and paper and sent to children in disadvantaged countries around the world.

Organisers had set themselves a target of filling a SchoolBag wall of 110 bags during its two-month stay in the Quedam. But that target has already been reached after just over two weeks!

A SIAB spokesman said: “We’ve done it and it is a massive thank you to everyone who has funded our 110 SchoolBags in just two-and-a-half weeks of having our shop in the Quedam.

“Thank you to the generosity of everyone who has supported us.

“But that’s not to say it stops now – certainly not! We’re going to keep going and see how many more are funded before the beginning of January when our occupancy at the shop runs out.”

The SIAB is a part of the Piers Simon Appeal which was first formed following the Boxing Day Asian Tsunami of 2004 which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people including former Preston School and Yeovil College student Piers Simon, 33.

The Piers Simon Appeal was launched in his memory to help those lives shattered by the tsunami and out of that came the School in a Bag initiative which has now seen around 75,000 schoolbags distributed around the globe.

The schoolbags cost £20 each, but what they provide poor and orphaned children around the globe is priceless.

School in a Bag is being supported this year by the Mayor of Yeovil, Cllr Darren Shutler, and he is urging people to go in and find out more about the charity.

“It’s a fantastic charity and I’m so pleased to be supporting it during my year in office,” he said. “I would ask as many people as possible to go in and sponsor a SchoolBag or just go in and learn more about the brilliant work this very local charity does for people throughout the world.”

PHOTO - ABOVE: Pop-in to the pop-up School in a Bag charity shop at the Quedam shopping centre in Yeovil.

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