Six-year-old Tooting girl raises over £1,000 for Wandsworth Foodbank

An incredible six-year-old girl from Tooting has raised more than £1,000 for Wandsworth Foodbank by climbing 150 flights of stairs in one day.

Lara Scott, 6, was inspired to take on the challenge after talking to her mum about the difficulties many people are facing at the moment.

She now hopes other children will do a stair climb challenge to help their local food banks.

Mum, Emma Lidgey, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that they spoke about food banks before bedtime last Wednesday (February 3) because a man who lives on their street helps to arrange collections and donations.

Lara wanted to raise some money to help, and was inspired to do a stair climb after her older brother Tommy did one with his friends.

"I said, why don't I do a little video and see if anyone on our street might want to sponsor you, because we've got a really active Whatsapp group and a really active sort of street community," said Emma.

"So we literally right at that minute did the video and sent it out to the street and to some friends and family and that was about it.

"Everybody then just sort of got really excited about it and the donations just started rolling in."

Emma estimates that £350 came from neighbours alone.

Local estate agents Aspire also matched donations.

"Maybe it's just because everyone is stuck indoors and feeling a bit helpless, but it's a nice thing to support," said Emma.

"You know, I think a lot of people do donate to the food bank, food banks out here anyway. And they tend to donate with money. And so maybe it just sort of gave people the impetus they needed to do that donation," said Emma.

She says Lara has been "overwhelmed" by the response, including a message from her local MP, Rosena Allin-Khan.

"Her brother wants to now do the same thing. And she has a photo shoot at the local estate agent so she's really thrilled," said Emma.

"She was hoping to get £100, but she got ten times that, so she's really chuffed."

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