Jade Athwal, a key member of the school’s Interact Club, which operates on partnership with Lichfield St Chad Rotary, has been making an impact with her charity work in the wider community.

Jade volunteers with the Midland Langar Seva Society and, along with other Sikhs, supports homeless people by collecting donations, cooking food, or purchasing foods. In addition to this, Jade helps with the provision of scarves, gloves, socks, hats which are also given to the homeless.

This commitment has been on-going for a number of years, and Jade has given up spare time to participate in a a wide variety of charity work with my family; for example, cleaning rooms for the Ronald McDonald House in Birmingham and raising money for charities such as St Giles and Acorns Hospices.

The Midland Langar Seva Society is an organisation to help those in need around the UK. The charity was established October 2013 in Walsall providing hot food and drink to those living on the streets, schools, safe houses and those on the poverty line. MLSS operates on Sikh based ethos, where we help and support all people regardless of social status.

Langar is the term used in the Sikh religion or in Punjab for general or common kitchen / canteen where food is served for free, without prejudice regardless of race, religion, and background.

The organisation is based on the Sikh principle of ‘dasvand’, which involves giving 10% of your time and earnings to help those less fortunate, and the team of 500 volunteers purchase food and make free hot meals that they offer to local homeless people, whilst encouraging members of the public to donate food, kitchen equipment and their time to the cause.

Since launching the charity in Walsall, the organisation has provided one million hot meals to homeless people in 17 locations around the UK as well as internationally, in India and Germany. The Service User base is varied, and all situation are different ranging from substance abuse to mental illness.

Carrie Cain, Assistant Headteacher, said: “Our Interact Club makes a real difference in the local community but we were thrilled to learn that Jade has a wider charity role in the Midland Langar Seva Society. We encourage all of our students to offer themselves up for voluntary work and charity fund-raising and Jade is certainly a role model in our school.”