Students from North East Scotland College are set to take-over three local Shelter Scotland charity shops in a challenge to see how much money they can raise to help tackle homelessness.
The group has been studying homelessness and other social issues and have been moved to help. They’ve been busy preparing for their takeover days with drives to bring in extra stock and training days to get to grips with life behind the tills at one of the busiest times of the year for retailers.
The Shelter Scotland shops in George Street and Union Street Aberdeen will be in the hands of the students on Monday December 12 and the shop in Fraserburgh will be taken over on Tuesday.
Kirstie Howard, social sciences lecturer at North East Scotland College, said:
“Our students are very enthusiastic about the prospect of running a Shelter Scotland store for the day. As part of their course the students have been studying local social issues, with focus on homelessness and bad housing being a rising problem in Aberdeen. It was a unanimous decision to support Shelter Scotland as students see this as an opportunity to not only enhance their skills for work, but raise awareness and funds for such a worthy cause.”
Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland said:
“I’m delighted to see these students bringing their energy and creativity to the challenge of raising funds to help us tackle bad housing and homelessness.
“Hundreds of thousands of people turned to Shelter Scotland when they had a housing problem last year. For some a call to our free, national helpline would have meant the difference between keeping their home and losing it. We can’t do this without the help of people raising funds so I want to thank the students for supporting us and wish them well with their takeover days.”
Shelter Scotland helps people to find and keep a home. Last year 28,882 calls were made to its free, national helpline and more than 720,000 unique visits were made to the charity’s get advice pages on its website. It also provides face to face services from the Shelter Scotland Aberdeen Community Hub at 36 Upperkirkgate.