BOLTON Wanderers have named an organisation which helps some of the town’s most desperate and vulnerable people as their local charity of the year.

Urban Outreach has been working in Bolton for more than 20 years and will be helped with its Grub Tubs, which provide food for the town’s most needy.

Best known for its Winter Watch programme, its café for homeless people and the Storehouse food bank, Urban Outreach also has projects which find accommodation and support homeless people, rehabilitate both male and female ex-offenders, support families with multiple problems and work with children and young people who go missing from home.

Chief executive of Urban Outreach Dave Bagley said: “We are delighted than Bolton Wanderers has chosen us as their local charity partner.

"The opportunity to work with the club to help disadvantaged individuals and families is really exciting.

“We’re especially pleased that our Grub Tubs will be going into the club so staff and fans can donate food items that we can pass on to those in need.”

Club chaplain Phil Mason added: “We are delighted to be supporting Urban Outreach and helping with the appeal for food through the Grub Tubs. Last Christmas our own Stuart Holden became linked with the charity through Holden’s Gifts of Hope and helped with the collection of much-needed food for the Storehouse project that helps create food parcels for those who need it the most.

“Following the collection of the food, Stuart and his brother Euan went to help out with creating Christmas hampers to deliver Christmas in a box to people who had very little for the festive period.” The charity’s Grub Tubs are in churches, shops, community centres and schools around Bolton.

Storehouse provides emergency food parcels to people hit by illness, unmanageable debts, benefit delays, homelessness, domestic abuse, redundancy or family breakdown. Vouchers are given out by more than 50 agencies across Bolton, which use a strict criteria to ensure that the food gets to the people who need it most.

Storehouse feeds about 300 people each week.

When people collect food, they are referred to other Urban Outreach projects or specialist agencies who can help with such things as debts, finding accommodation, training opportunities and tackling domestic abuse.

Tomorrow’s clash with Sheffield Wednesday is the Whites’ charity match day.