AROUND 50,000 lunches will be packed into brown paper bags and given to disadvantaged children over the summer holidays.

Members of the community joined charity workers from Urban Outreach to help out with the lunches yesterday morning at Central Baptist Church in Snowden Street.

The work included making sandwiches, checking the hundreds of pieces of fruit that had been delivered and sorting out the drinks before placing them into brown paper bags.

The lunches will be made every day and given to children who usually get free meals at school but do not get them during the holidays.

Dave Bagley, chief executive of Urban Outreach, said: "We are just covering the free school lunches so it involves making lunches every day for thousands of children who are eligible for free school meals.

"This is about picking up some of that slack when, during the school holidays, they don't have school dinners.

"If they are used to eating free meals at school, the chances are that they might not get a lunch during the holidays.

"Some people say it is up to the parents to feed them, which it is, but we are in strange times. This is just filling a bit of that gap."

The charity and volunteers will be making lunches every day during the summer break.

During that time, around 50,000 lunches will be made, which cost around £52,000 in total.

With one of each item in the packed lunches, that means 50,000 sandwiches, fruit drinks, packets of baked cheese snacks, fruit cereal bars and pieces of fruit.

Mr Bagley said they had no idea how many people were going to help out and was pleased with the turnout, which was around 30 people at some points, including children on their holidays.

He said: "We just put out asking 'if you're up for helping, please come down' and so we had a bunch of about 30 people making sandwiches earlier, people doing the bags, folk from Bolton School and youngsters giving up part of their summer holidays.

"It is fantastic seeing other young people standing alongside their peers. It is not them feeling sorry for them, it is them standing with them. It is brilliant, there's a real atmosphere here.

"And everybody wants to be here, nobody is down here because it's a toil. You make new friends, people here we have never met before, some people we have known for years.

"It is just fantastic and it demonstrates that we do it so well in Bolton. We look after one another.

"It says a lot about how Bolton looks after Bolton. We look after our communities and our neighbours."

Mr Bagley said there were around 54 volunteers who came down to the first lunch-making session yesterday as well as five or six members of staff.

Anyone who wants to get involved can find contact details and information at urbanoutreach.co.uk